Tell All
by frooit
Summary: ::part ELEVEN up:: Zack does his very best to protect what he loves. ::work in progress::
1. part 1

**tell all**_ by frooit_

part one

_ff7 semi-au - zack pov, eventual zack/cloud_  
"zack does is very best to protect what he loves."  
_ updated as of 3/21/11  
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_This is it._

He's not exactly smooth or cool, or under control. Zack doesn't know whether he's coming or going half the time, and you know, that might bother some people but it's never really bothered him. It's not every day that you're fighting for something, someone, an ideal, a brighter future. It's not every day that you're looked upon to do great things. Maybe he's a romantic, a dreamer, but this is what he believes: Shinra's for the better of the people. They're moving the world forward.

He'll make 'em proud, his ma' and his dad. They always told him that he had a one-track mind hidden somewhere under all that chaos, and that much was true. Shinra this, SOLDIER that. It's all he talked about growing up (back in that place, in that forever ago place...). _I'm gonna be the greatest, the strongest. I'm gonna be a hero._ He's so close to his dream, nearly a part of it all, but for now he's just another cog in the machine. How quickly things change will always surprise Zack.

Too damn busy looking forward, looking always further rather than seeing what was around him. He never slowed until he met a brick wall. Only at that end, that point of no return, when there's nothing left to do but take a step back, would he stop. No wonder it was always a sucker punch that knocked him on his ass. No matter how many times it happened, it always got him. You'd think you'd develop an eye for this sort of thing. Not Zack.

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_First impressions._

Zack should be getting himself into trouble. He honestly should have been kicked out, suspended, something. There was that fire incident in the barracks to think about, and the loose birds in the cafeteria, and then the laundry room fiasco. Everyone remembers that one. There's a good enough reason for everything though, or at least a good enough excuse, and the reason slash excuse he's still here is that he responds too well to their training. Even for their own liking, you know. Certain things he does, certain character flaws have gone generally overlooked. As long as they were small enough and involved as few cadets as possible he was shiny. This should be his credo.

They loved his unflagging determination, his unyielding strength, his desire to win. He was their current most promising graduate and along with a swelled ego, it gave him certain advantages. One of these was freedom. Freedom to roam and rove and ask too many questions of too many unsuspecting Shinra employees. You'd think it would be the other way around, constant surveillance and confinement, but someone upstairs saw things differently. Constant input, perpetual stimulation, it was a necessity for a voracious personality like Zack's. Call it his medicine, he was _officially_ diagnosed anyway. _Hyperactive_ and _excitable_ were recurring words in his first few evaluations after all.

Freedom was only what you could do with it. He kept finding himself with less and less chances to exercise the privilege. His mother would say something about demons and idle hands here. As if to prove this, his instructors filled his days with as much training and exams and briefings and evaluations as possible. No free time meant no idle hands meant no problems for them to iron out later. Perfectly played Shinra.

He _would_ be causing trouble, outside his SOLDIER barometers, but all the downtime he does stumble across he just spends in the dormitory, sleeping away the day's aches and pains, hibernating before the next buzz from his cell phone. As he was he had the pleasure of separate lodgings. If you happened to find yourself lower on the totem pole (ie, militia, pilots, artillery, medical, the list rolls on) you slept in group rooms. Bunks for miles and no privacy. Albeit they were segregated by class, they still slept toe to toe, balls to elbows. The SOLDIER dorms, that's where he's headed. For a midday nap. Good enough time as any to test Shinra's otherwise unscrupulous eye. He was supposed to be up in Advanced Materia Testing but fire balls and blizzards can wait, beauty sleep calls.

There are branches of rooms on either side as he goes along. Sitting areas and vending machine alcoves and long corridors with doors inside numbered up to however many. He catches something just then. Vibrations. Voices carry in this place. He slows his breathing down to a hollow half breath and halts his pace. Cursing. Yelling. A fight? It's a resonating in the halls, a radiating off the walls, an echoing. Zack moves on ahead, helpless either way, the SOLDIER dorms were further down. He doesn't have much hope of finding the source before someone else does and breaks it up, but he gets lucky. Four boys, three of which stand opposed to the one left over, occupy the hall. A large glass window outlines their presence, darkness smudging an inky halo. The boy opposed has his back to Zack. Blonde hair erupts from his head, the direction of which looks purely random. Some fringes jet forwards and back, some straight down, some straight up. _Porcupine_ is Zack's first thought, his second is malformed as a cry lets loose from the threesome's side, a fist following tandem, catching the singular boy as much by surprise as Zack. The jab crashes into the boy's chin and he staggers. He would have fallen if he hadn't found Zack's arms, or Zack's arms hadn't found him. The whole of his weight in his hands and he feels like nothing.

"Whoa."

Just air between his teeth.

Zack doesn't react so much from his head as from his gut. His first conclusion falls under wonder, this second epiphany scorches like anger. He grimaces. His reputation on it's own should be enough but he can't help but make it worse. His teeth grit, forcing his jaw tighter and tighter, click, click, click. The threesome flinches and takes a collective step back. The air tingles with anticipation, with possibility.

"You shouldn't bother yourself with him," one of the three utters.

"And why's that?" Zack asks.

He erects the singular boy to his feet, giving him a good pat on the back. The uniform is ironed to perfection and off-the-shelf new. This boy's shoulders are stiff and hunched, his face angled towards the floor. Zack distracts himself from that for now and looks to the threesome, but it doesn't pay, they've already gone.

"Geez."

He smiles, despite the boy's disinterest.

"I guess I need to work on my people skills."

Cue silence. Heavy silence.

Zack has a good memory and an even better eye. He's never seen this one around before. He wouldn't have missed a mop like that. New cadets are old hat sure, but this one. _This _one.

Still that silence.

Break it for the love of Gaia.

"Um, my name's Zack by the way."

This boy, he has no idea what he's about to do as he looks up. This boy, thin and small and strange, he lifts his chin to reveal his face. Zack is stunned. Well, because he's stunning, and that's the best he's got. The silence then is a different shade of awkward discomfort and heavy weight and Zack can't think of anymore words to string together to use as a charming opener.

A cut splits his well-shaped lips. Living red adds highlight to this symmetry of soft angles and smooth edges and white, white skin. Zack can't find the will to pull his eyes away and isn't sure of much else in that moment. And there he's reminded of the ocean. Those eyes like horizon. The depth and length of his stare, endless. The boy is miserable. He can taste it, he can feel it, it's wafting off him like a fever.

"Thanks," the boy says and turns to make tracks.

"Hey, _wait_."

His face becomes blank in profile, sterile, as if not to insight a reactive emotion. If that was his intention it doesn't work on Zack. He's an entirely different breed than what he must be used to dealing with. This null expression makes Zack persistent. It seals the deal, as they would say, last nail in the coffin.

"What's your name?"

"Strife."

Well, isn't that the truth.

So for days Zack's thinking this boy's parents could see the future with a name like that. He'll find out though that his name was a little more unassuming.

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_Rec Room._

"What? You mean that little shit?"

"He looks like a fucking girl."

"I bet he is."

"Hah! Work in a pinch then."

Gales of laughter.

Some things never change. Boys will be boys. You could take from them their freedom, their vices, you could direct their boundless energy, their hungry minds, but... you couldn't take out the animal. Not that Shinra truly wanted to. The barracks are a cesspool of libido and testosterone, things happen there that Shinra does its finest to keep on the down low, the subterranean down low. Still, that works to their advantage. A bunch of under-sexed, strung out, aggravated boys do a lot for pussy.

Although, there's always the alternative.

Zack has a bone to pick.

And he's not exactly a small guy either.

He can comfortably get involved.

He's honed in on the group laughing and grab-assing while he does his curls. A daily thing. A required thing. Couldn't have their aspiring 1st class SOLDIER getting soft. Fifty pounds for twenty minutes, each arm, no exceptions (that last part is optional). It's just a dent in his routine and his isn't as extensive as some of the other SOLDIER 3rd class routines. Not lately. That's because he has an agenda, and he's coming this way. The blonde. _Singular blonde boy_. He brings the dumbbell up to his shoulder and back down again. _Thirteen, fourteen, fif_—

"Hey, sexy!"

Zack perks up.

"I'll give you a smoke for a bj."

This cadet is holding a cigarette out to this singular blonde boy. Coincidentally it's one of the boys from his earlier encounter. The dumbbell sags in Zack's arm.

"Oh, come on Strife, don't give me that face. What's your real name anyway?"

A momentary pause.

"Cloud."

And there it is.

One of the boys in the group snorts.

"_Claude_?"

"Okay, Claude—"

"It's Cloud."

The cigarette turns in the cadet's fingers. He moves to put it between Cloud's lips but he jerks away, the cut still so fresh.

"Ah. I like the feisty ones."

Cloud's had enough and starts off, one foot leading the other, but it's not so easy. A hand latches onto his forearm and he's stopped cold. He does what anyone would do in that situation and tries to pull away. He's shoved down onto a bench behind and the boy, cigarette still in hand, looms above.

"Not so fast," the cadet coos.

There's not much warning when Zack latches his own fingers into the cadet's shoulder, a mimicry. His grip wild and whatever it wanted to be, and it wanted to be cruel. The boy jumps and shoots a look back; attention disrupted Cloud melts away. Zack's face is unforgiving, cold, alarming contrast to his norm. He stands a full foot taller and maybe a bit more than the cadet. It's played off. He receives a casual, cautious but always cool laugh.

"So I see he's spoken for?"

"You need to chill out," Zack says.

"_Chill out_, huh?"

The hand is shrugged off, Zack's grip gone loose.

"Fuck off, Fair."

Zack snatches the cigarette from its perch and places it on his own lips, the offending piece now twisting in his teeth. He's not quite ready to level this kid, but he's close. He takes a bite into the filter and waits for retaliation. It comes in the form of retreat. Cigarette boy, formerly, and the rest of the group disperse and sulk away as they always do, moving on to bigger and badder things. Cloud is nowhere to be found afterward. Stepping over his forgotten dumbbell Zack abandons the curls, abandons his training, and goes on the hunt.

"You can't smo—"

"I know."

The rest of the day _nearly_ goes on the same as it ever would. He looks for him, like some jonesing fiend, but he never spots him. Not that he doesn't try. Doesn't go as far as asking about him, like he wanted to, but some things are better not broadcasted. It's really not to say he didn't half-ass every task at hand and skip out on many faulty smoke break suggestions.

Cloud Strife. He has a name at the very least.

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_Mission #27 - air drop._

Thinking right now is all you can do. They call this the calm before the storm. You're supposed to be relaxing, expunging complex thought, breathing even, slow, and getting your heart rate down. But that's not what Zack is doing. He's got his grip tight on the bar, the only thing holding him back from falling so many hundreds of feet to an unpleasant consequence and safety. The chopper banks, he banks with it, head rolling, pitching. He just can't stop thinking.

Red lips, teeth, a smiling mouth. A smooth, wet tongue. Wire-long fingers. He hasn't had day dreams like this since Gongaga. The atmosphere, the feeling of it, it was strange and tense, thick. There doesn't seem to be enough air in the world to fill his lungs. He's utterly breathless and yet it whips into his face, stings at his eyes. The smell of warm flesh and the feeling of it, glide. It would be soft but a cushion of muscle would be there working underneath, firm and sinewy. His hands, palms, fingertips, they would do the seeing as his eyes would be closed. Shuddering glimpses, lightning strike pictures. Blue eyes, innocent, trusting. A frame slight but defined. Small but tough. The hair to brush against his cheek would be feathery soft, smelling clean and virgin. A breath would whisper, lips so close tiny hairs would perk, receptive. The breath would be a word...

Crackling interference and then the pilot's voice.

"_You got two minutes, boys."_

And the word would be...

His body aches. His bones ache.

The word would be his name.

_Zack._

He jumps early.

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	2. part 2

**tell all**_ by frooit_

part two

_ff7 semi-au - zack pov, eventual zack/cloud_  
"zack gets a new assignment."  
_ updated as of 3/21/11_

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_Mission #27 - Wutai, ground zero_

It's a show like no other, this one is. A mish mash of red and amber and orange and pink and a burst just there of yellow, just enough to remind him, even here, even now, that he can't shake the boy from his head. This sunset, a Wutai treasure, swells in the sky, smears across the horizon and still his thoughts are on him. Golden yellow. Like the colour of his hair, one like no other, as bright as the flaming out Sun. Zack turns, checks over the squad. They're organized and ready to move, nothing much else on their minds but getting precious combat experience.

Hungry boot camp grunts. He knows how this should feel. This strange excitement used to get his blood pumping, used to be a calling, an itch. The loose, bouncing energy and the tension. It fueled his cause. This time it feels down right wrong. These are familiar settings with none of the familiar senses.

He leads the squad forward into unfriendly land, the claustrophobicly close growth and razor-fine foliage difficult to move through but good cover all the same. It's minutes now until they reach occupied territory and their destination.

This weight in his gut, it feels like he's going to lose something. That he's about to forfeit an opportunity and with every step it's getting further away, just say goodbye. God, that's terrifying. Uncertainty is not a trait one desires during an objective. Victory is decided in the mind, they tell you. It's mind over matter. And further more, Wutai isn't completely occupied by farmers. The countryside is crawling, he knows, with the paranoid soldiers of an invaded kingdom. At the very least they're not left alone in their suspense, no, the air's clogged with it, stagnant, surreal. Wutai is waiting out there in the doused light, waiting for a fight.

Zack can't bear to disappoint.

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_Midgar - upper plates_

Coming back to the roar of the diluted populous never felt so good.

They're cheering almost as loudly as they would for Sephiroth.

Almost.

Bruised, bloodied and knocked around, every hand reaches out as they go by. Like lost or forgotten family members they pat and salute them, clapping and smiling. Even Shinra trumpets their return and the sound is deafening. A shindig made possible because of Shinra's love of good press. Publicizing these Wutai "relief" missions puts them in good light. For all the public knows, for all they've been told, Wutai started the war. With Shinra's spin their raggedy squad look like wounded heroes. And Shinra as a whole? The righteous protector.

Zack smiles despite himself. He babies the torn ligament in his shoulder, among other injuries, but he smiles. It's a shame not to, you know. All these infectious grinning faces, anonymous and everywhere, so intent on _you_ and what you're all about. You're heroes somehow, even if they don't know the logistics. Even if they don't know that it was a smash and grab job, that many Wutai lost their lives in ways romanticized by the public, dreamt up by troubled minds.

_War is hell._

They sift through the crowd, nearing the prominent headquarters building and the blaring trumpeters. As they gradually flank the entrance, rounding the numerous front stone steps, more commotion is illuminated. The President is in mid speech, pointing and jeering, his platform suspended above the crowd. This sharp podium drips with his garish crimson banners. Zack just makes out _dedication_ and _fearlessness_ through the speakers' whine and crackle, grandiose matter-of-fact tone turning his stomach. He can see Sephiroth, blank and uninterested, standing off and behind the dwarfed (in so many ways) President. Some kind of ill omen, that's what he is, but the people love him.

Zack's looking away when he catches it, those peaked and pointed 3rd Class senses doing their job. Something yellow, a signal that doubles his heart rate. Cloud stands at attention with his troop. They line the steps counting up to the headquarters's main doors. He has his head turned upward towards that raised platform. There's a wonder struck face if Zack ever saw one. He doesn't have to think twice of what or _who_, rather, is causing that down right covetous expression. He already knows. He manufactured that road. It's something like Hopeless Lane, Lost Cause Avenue, Enflamed Ego Way. It tastes like betrayal, bitter and dry. Something rough to swallow.

That adoration and love, he knows that. There's something else though... Something equally annoying. He has to spin around and walk backwards to get the chance to check and not lose his group. This boy, so much blond hair and new world ideas and hopes. In profile Zack can't tell, can't see, but Cloud looks to him, directly at him, and he can see. It's enormous against his washed out complexion, hard to miss. The bruise blots most of Cloud's cheek bone and edges the orbit of his left eye. A lovely addition to his already busted lip.

Zack no longer smiles.

_Those degenerate fucks._

His squad passes by and heads on to the barracks adjoining the main headquarters.

They part the last wall of regaling, thrashing spectators and end their parade.

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_Shinra Barracks - SOLDIER level #3_

After a mission or for analysis (regular inoculations, blood testing, let's try and not call these experiments), Zack doesn't go to a regular medical unit, he goes to a Specialist. It's a lot less thrilling than it's made out to be unfortunately, and it almost always means Mako showering or needles or long hours of monitoring. An unpleasant additive to being a SOLDIER, sure, but Zack takes it in begrudging stride. If it keeps him off a gurney and under the wide blue sky, why not? Give him an hour of Mako osmosis and prodding white coats any day.

Despite torn muscles, broken bones, bullet holes, and sliced flesh, he's already out and about, nearly alive again, two hours after their return. When you're who he is, SOLDIER 3rd class that is, you get roughly five minutes down time a day (not including the medical attention), and that's just an estimation. If you don't have the stamina of a pack of wild dogs like he does, that might be a problem. And as things go, he's running low on that canine enthusiasm.

Bribing time to stretch that five minute dead zone into something longer and lucrative isn't easy, but it can be done. At the very least he remembers weaknesses and Zack's Head Specialist has an easy one. He butters him up with a couple of reassuring words and four cigarettes and makes his escape, moving down the hall and toward the elevators. He has to move quickly in order to find Cloud before someone realizes he's gone. Procedure would have him reporting to the Director right now. He'd be up there for the rest of the day. Shinra and stalled productivity are not good bedfellows. They could suspend him. They could demote him. _They could, they could_, oh, it all sounds so distant.

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_Shinra Elevator #6_

You couldn't classify Zack as a bad kid, a troubled youth. He was hardly a kid to begin with and besides, he means well. It's just that his determination being useful remains to be seen. Overzealous and excitable and Zack have all been spoken together in the same sentences before. Conversations sounding very similar to: _He doesn't always think things through; he runs on pipe dreams and childish emotion; he's a disaster waiting to happen_. It's all a proceeding reputation he doesn't yet know he's made for himself. A cycle. Reverse telephone. Distorted information gradually becoming clear. They all have it out for him. Wheel of Fortune, Cosmo Canyon's karma, God. From day one.

Zack's been AWOL for half an hour now and still no such luck. Dormitory down, cafeteria down, rec room down... He has few shots left. The training levels, SOLDIER, Midgar. He wouldn't be on SOLDIER floors, by reason of security access, so... Zack depresses the button for training floor #1, level A. It's a face plate in colour-coded selections, seven buttons across, ten down. There are six training floors all accounted. A long sigh doesn't encompass this. Rest, relaxation? No. That's not what he's looking for. He wants a name, a place, immortality. Wants to be the best. When you're the best you don't give in, give up, throw away hope. You always see things to the end.

Whether he knows what to expect or not.

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_Shinra Barracks - training floor #3, level B_

The elevator chimes and the doors glide open. He may not know what to expect but the potential is there. In Zack's world, this glowing bright thing, this unit of endless possibility, he stays positive. Never quite ready for when that damn sucker punch comes but at the very least he'll be shining before it does. As it rains down, hammers down, he can smile and smile. He'll stay cool and collected and find Cloud. Maybe he'll be glad to see him, or, instinctual doubt all the same, he could be somewhere else completely, not even in this fucking building.

"Happy thoughts..." he says under his breath.

The training facility is branched off into several categories. One by one by one, you guessed it. Zack starts from the far end and works his way along. Aerobics, aquatics, explosives, hand to hand, weights, and ever on. An endless selection of so-called Shinra conditioning. They will make you stronger and faster and as docile as infants, if they so desire. He finds himself at the opposite end before long. The locker rooms and showers. It's looking grim.

"This would be my first one."

"Pop that cherry."

Several voices rise, shoot back and forth.

"Who's the 3rd Class they're sending again? I can't keep them straight. "

"Fair."

Zack stops.

Another mission, huh.

He closes in and listens.

"Northern Continent... The fuck's out there anyway?"

"I dunno. Freeze our balls off though, thas' for sure."

"How many?"

"Just a few, Hardin said. Maybe ten."

"Damn."

"Are you nervous, Cloud?"

Delight tingles. He continues to listen.

"Should I be?"

"Well, if this is your_ first one_, I would be."

"I'm not sure how I feel."

"Ooh, mysterious Cloud over here. Just don't wet yourself when we go in."

Laughter.

Several beats on and Cloud almost head butts Zack as he's rounding the corner.

"What..."

Zack has to think quickly (which has never been his strong suit).

"I, uh... I was just coming down to... brief. Didn't mean to scare you."

Cloud eyeballs him, an eternally long inspection. That damned cut lip and angry bruise a distraction from the whole picture. It's obvious he doesn't trust him. Can hear those thoughts now: _This guy again, what the hell?_

"Oh," Cloud says.

"How—"

_Beep, beep._

Cloud's eyebrows rise.

Zack's cellphone.

Never a better time.

He pulls it out and flips it open.

_You're about to get fucked_, the messages reads.

Kunsel, you son of a bitch.

"Actually, never mind. I've got... a problem."

"A problem?"

He leaves Cloud there staring after him. Soft, pink lips swollen and downright pornographic. Bruise a promise. A promise that he can take the pain, the hurt, and he'll bounce right back.

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He's on the phone immediately. Kunsel picks up after the first ring.

"So why am I fucked?"

"Hello to you too. The Director..."

His hearts sinks.

"...has been asking about you. Apparently he wants to give you some new assignment. Where the hell are you anyway?"

"Vacation."

Silence.

"Alright," Kunsel says.

Zack reaches the elevator and knocks the call button with his knuckles. Kunsel continues.

"Get your ass up here as soon as possible. Remember, I'm still 2nd Class. Don't make me pull rank."

The doors glide open.

He steps inside.

"Wouldn't want you to have to do that," Zack remarks.

"I'm serious."

The line clicks.

"Great."

The metal doors meet and close.

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_Shinra Elevator #6_

Fuck up number two goes down as bad timing. Fuck up number one was good timing but bad follow through. If he keeps up like this he'll never talk to the kid. And what are they going to talk about anyway? What exactly is he hoping for? What exactly is the end game? He doesn't know. He doesn't really care, to tell the truth. It's a chance for change. It's a chance for something new and exciting.

His Holy Grail. His Golden Fleece.

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_SOLDIER Executive level #1_

He doesn't much like these little meetings but no one was yelling or pointing fingers or even asked where he'd been the last hour and a half so he couldn't ask for more. It was strictly business. You are to do this and that in the name of Shinra and in return you'll be promoted, and you like promotions, don't you? Yes, you do. That will make you a 2nd class and all the closer to your little dream. Your cute little, small town boy aspiration. The Director exudes disapproval. He does this to Sephiroth so maybe it wasn't personal. Chalk it up to personality defect. Like Kunsel's love of ham sandwiches and Zack's obsession with a certain somebody.

Speculations aside he has twelve hours to get his shit together for this mission.

Ten untrained soldiers under his control in a land frozen and dead and empty, across the sea.

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_Mission #28 - briefing_

Gearing up has to be a love hate relationship for Zack. He's right there between loving the goodies Shinra endlessly provides and just wanting to get out there. Like a jungle cat caged. Just let me loose to do my thing. He adjusts his broad sword, his weapon of choice, and takes another well-deserved breath. Something so simple never so evident unless in a pinch. Again with the apprehension. It's especially magnified by the presence of Cloud. Sensations heightened, the air super chilled and crisp. They don't heat these buildings. Cold steel for miles. Mako gushes throughout the workings, but none to spare on comfort. Not in a war machine.

Helmets, light armour, firearms, ammo, provisions. Zack takes inventory. He checks his rag tag team once more, last chance, and then gets them moving out. He ushers them through the door, one by one, to the landing pad outside. One by one, he puts a hand on their shoulder and spins his usual captain jargon. _You got this, don't balk, keep your head on straight._ Lastly, it's Cloud and he hesitates. One quick ride on a chopper and they'll be there, ass deep in snow, looking for a forest no one is sure even exists. He better turn on this SOLDIER everyone hears about. He better stop this crap. He slaps a hand down on Cloud's back. He jumps.

"Sorry, man."

He looks up to Zack, their difference in height staggering.

"You ready?"

Not something he'd say to just anyone.

"Yes sir."

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_Mission #28 - Northern Continent, air drop_

When things go wrong around Zack they don't just go wrong (we're not talking lost socks or missing lighters or broken insert objects here), it's catastrophic or go home. People die or get shot up or lose bits of themselves. It's every man for himself when the powers that be decide to rock the boat. And they usually rock that boat until it's sunk.

Their departure from Midgar was supposed to bring them to their destination around sun down. If there were any hostiles on this frozen hunk of land that would minimize their visibility. A smooth insertion, a smooth mission. This in turn puts a hell of a strain on the pilot, but they had confidence. Not much can be said about that confidence now. Their pilot is burning, cremating, back inside the chopper.

Back with everyone else.

They were maybe twenty minutes out, red lights on, pilot marking off the minutes, counting down to go time. Every one of the boys, _just boys, dammit_, have their helmets on and visors down. He's lost Cloud to the anonymity, the sameness. A sharp jolt demands his attention. He turns his head to the pilot, air waves crackling, but that's as far as he gets before bright white consumes his vision and then black kills that off.

It happens so fast.

He opens his eyes to a dark blue sky, spotted and marked by the dots of stars. Twinkling and winking. A smell at first, a whiff of gasoline, of exhaust, smoke. Zack's up in a flash.

The chopper is alight, torched red and orange, yards away from where he finds himself knee deep in snow. Bodies, some face down, some twisted and charred, some half buried in ice, lie here, there lit in the otherwise dark by the fire light machine. Four in all, he counts. There were ten of them, eleven including the pilot. He's thrashing through the powdery stuff and to the closest body. It's cold to the touch, but that might just be his numb fingers.

He tears the helmet off, heart rate steady for the moment, lump in his throat cooperating.

A moment of not knowing and then mocking relief.

It's not him. Just a dead soldier.

He tosses the helmet and trudges to the next. This uniform a crackling black mess, fleshy red fingers visible through flame eaten gloves, armour melted.

_Please, oh please, please, please..._

He's tentative in his removal of this helmet, careful and kind but it's not him.

That lump grows on every swallow, his guts sickening with not knowing.

Just two more to go in this twisted game. Two more chances for desperate, insane hope.

And utter defeat.

The next body he comes to is face up and smoking, singed but not blackened. His helmet sits askew on his head, as if too large or knocked by a great force. He can believe it, the visor is cracked, jagged, red smearing the inside and starting to drip from the lip. It's a sight. He gets to this one and takes a second for himself, just a second. Compose and breathe and pace yourself. He gets a hand on either side of the wrecked helmet and pulls upwards, slow, slow, slower, and. Fuck.

Holy Grail, Golden Fleece, and here's the hair to match.

It forces out all the breath from inside him. He'd have fallen on his ass, given up, cried, who knows, it's all potential in his shining, bright world, but Cloud twitches. Muscles spasm after death, nothing new to him, but it's followed by a groan, and dead people don't usually groan.

"Oh, fuck. Hey, _hey_. Hey, are you..."

_Okay?_

That growing throat lump prevents this swallow.

He's really not though. His visor cracking inward sent glass into that already bruised up left eye it looks like, and there's not much there but gobs of clotting blood and shreds of skin. Cloud's right eye, untouched, spherical and ocean blue, is on him. Glued, stuck, mesmerized. He's probably in shock.

"Stay there."

He runs his numb fingers down each arm, over his chest, down each leg. What he's feeling for is the wetness of blood or a distortion, a protruding bone, but he finds none of these.

"Can you hear me?"

"Kind of," Cloud grits.

"Okay. We need to get away from this thing."

Fire is warm, yes, but explosions are bad.

Zack moves behind Cloud and holds his arms out. Cloud lifts his arms, agonizing, his ruined face showing it all, and grips Zack's hands. He pulls him through the drift, away from the danger of combustion and lets go. The warmth is missed, the contact is missed. He squats next to him.

"I'm going to check for others."

"Sure," Cloud says, dampened, raspy.

.

.

.

There's nothing left, no one left. The chopper burns on, tattooing the surrounding area and licking at the sky, taunting, challenging. No supplies, no radio, nothing. Zack watches it and tries to think.

Well, he has his sword and a gun, but they're not expected back for a few days. Missing units aren't cataloged until ten or some hours after official mission end time and this mission wasn't given an official end time. Or he was never notified. By the looks of things, they could be here for some time.

He returns to Cloud.

No words are exchanged for minutes, hours, no one's keeping track.

He sits close, nice and close, sharing heat.

"Zack..."

"Huh?"

"What's wrong with my eye?"

How to handle this...

Zack leans as close as he can.

"It's... gone."

He could have done better.

"You're bleeding," Cloud adds.

Zack looks over. He's pointing to his face.

He feels as best he can. It's the side of his face, along his jaw, just a cut.

"Yeah, I guess I am."

Return to silence.

.

.

.

.


	3. part 3

**tell all**_ by frooit_

part three

_ff7 semi-au - zack pov, eventual zack/cloud_  
"a weakness admitted, he's not sure how to deal with this"  
_ updated as of 5/12/11_

_._

_._

_._

_._

_Aborted mission - Northern Continent_

At the very least they won't soon die of dehydration. Everywhere you look it's crystallized water. It blusters against their faces and swirls, clotted, depositing light layers taller and taller on. It's promising to bury them if they stayed too long. Zack has got to get them to shelter if he plans on having them survive, and he does plan on it, with every fibre of his somewhat diluted being. He's going to save Cloud. Whatever happens, he'll save him. Hell or high... snow drift.

He can't do anything about those that were lost. As he's looking out at the wreckage and seeing them, turned and torched and dead as door nails, it's his standing as a leader he starts to question, his role. Their lives done, voices silenced, ideals forgotten. It's hard fact that they'll be skipped over or over glorified by Shinra, by Midgar, used and abused. Their families, their friends, manipulated and assured those people-shaped voids are going to melt away. Along with the memory of their faces, voices, and their favourite television shows. He was supposed to protect them, guide them, keep 'em kicking.

Great example, Fair.

"I've got to do something."

Cloud doesn't quickly respond.

Eye closed, head tilted down, he just is.

"Hey..."

Zack nudges him.

That fear's back.

"Hey, _Cloud_."

Truth is, it never left.

A grumble.

"Do what you gotta do," his muffled voice urges.

So Zack moves away, disconnecting their tangle. His arm over skinny shoulders, Cloud's forehead pressed to breastbone. Human origami. The break in body heat already starts to eat at him. Whittling, chipping, the chill will most certainly win. It must be killing Cloud.

Killing.

_He's going to die. Going to go under and never wa—shut it. Get moving. Set the boys out, away from the crackling and flame-spitting chopper, and then find a cave or something to crawl into. Get Cloud's face cleaned up, get him warm._

He can do this.

Stay positive.

"Okay," Zack admits, breathy as a sigh.

.

.

.

They're on a cliff. This isn't exactly good news. It's a long way to the bottom as far as the snow won't let him see. It could be feet or yards, ten or twenty straight down, he just doesn't know. Just a blank white page out there, masking the ocean and all the miles between them and Midgar. Rocks jut and climb behind, an unbroken line at their backs. From what he sees, the heavy cloud cover might have blinded the pilot and he never would have spotted them. They're lucky they made land at all.

Mountain ridge to cliff dive it's a distance of ninety feet (by his six foot tall stride). This current location, this rock lip blanketed in equal amounts snow and despair, runs off like a ribbon to a point he can't quite gauge. More to question. Which means there is either more disappointment or further options. Somewhere against that ridge and through the haze of white and black (ying and yang), Cloud is between a rock, a hard place and the way out.

Zack has to find it, over or under, let's not be picky, or there's nothing can be done. He can't afford to leave him out in this much longer. Weather aside, the kid's running on nothing but temporary adrenaline and sticky neurological shock. When (_if_, where the shock's concerned) that wears off he doesn't want them to be where someone or something might pick it up, even in this snow storm. He can be hopeful, yes, but if he wants to be practical he should think an injury like that won't go quietly. Simple fractures have cost him enough, squirming and hissing, but this is a gouged eye we're talking about. Fucking hell. This isn't pop over to the pharmacy and get a bandaid, this is call a damn healer.

And of course they didn't administer materia this time around.

.

.

.

He sets out all three fallen cadets, side by side, far enough removed for Cloud not to see. He'd checked for pulses before, now he checks pockets and supply kits, hoping for something useful. Anything at all. What he finds is half a pack of cigarettes, several ammo magazines, a bent stick of gum, two combs, one rifle, two emergency med kits, a grenade, and a crumpled receipt.

Nice.

Hand over hand over chest, features blank or burned, they're like totems. Regret, Sorrow, Defeat. Morality and ethics should keep even in terrible circumstances, you'd think. You'll realize soon that survival is a state of mind and ethics and morals are just guidelines, suggestions. They're rose coloured. What you'll allow yourself to get away with, that's the true challenge. His duty, the damned mission, they've been a yard stick, a morality metre. How he dealt with hostiles, tough decisions, it was all preconceived, training, auto pilot. He examines each of their faces, silently apologizing.

_Just a dead soldier._

A weakness admitted, he's not sure how to deal with this.

.

.

.

The chopper blazes down at last, losing its match with the relentless flurry. A fried frame is all that stands to show. Zack inspects the sooted wreckage, finding the remains of the pilot and three other cadets. One of these cadets he finds on the far side of the machine, his legs pinned under the chopper's metal belly, the rest of him burned to a crisp. The missing two could have been lost at sea, or thrown over the cliff as they struck, or they could be wandering close by. The thought is unnerving.

First thing's first.

"Time t-to go."

He tries for confident leader but gets a stutter instead.

Charming.

Cloud rolls his head up, that weary one-eyed gaze glossy and uneven.

"Home?" Cloud rasps.

Zack doesn't answer.

The kid's face, it's bruising and swelling now, bleeding under the skin, ruined optical oozing down that formerly perfect cheek. It's running to the corner of his mouth, off his chin, red and thick. It globs but cannot dry, the air just too damn damp.

He can't leave him like this.

Zack shrugs off his tundra grade jacket, tearing the sleeve of the thermals underneath clean off. The fabric funnel he's left with he makes into a strip, a pseudo sash. This he uses to cover Cloud's damaged eye. He gets little resistance or reaction as he pulls it tight enough to stay, knotting it off behind Cloud's head.

"There."

This beaten and broken boy, he shrugs.

With that done Zack crouches low so he can lift him up on his back. Wrapping his arms around his neck, Cloud presses his frozen lips and nose to Zack's naked nape. One of the few times his hair isn't long enough to swaddle a small child in and it has to be now. Shinra proposed this rule, see, this new damned rule about, quote, excessively_, _unquote, long hair. Something to do with mobility and professionalism and this other crap the Director tried to get him to listen to. Of course this didn't apply to all parties (particularly those starting with 'S'). There are certain aspects of Shinra that really tick him off.

Anyway, with a comply or die (suspend) policy Zack had little choice but to chop it.

So he did.

He's lamenting that loss when a warm breath sends a wave to his guts.

Now he's praising it.

.

.

.

Following the ridge they head away from the crash. If there had been more of the bird left he would have holed them up there, but no such luck. It's open on either side, skeletal. Zack plods along, the flaky, soft powder uneven and difficult to navigate. He's counting paces, one by two by three. He's up to fifty in no time. The ridge remaining constant, no indents or hidey holes. After the tally surpasses one-fifty he stops for a break. Less for himself and more for his passenger.

Slight and young (just _how_ young he doesn't yet know), Cloud weighs nothing at all. He's burning up all the same. Nothing so small should radiate heat bon fire strong like this. Got to be feverish. Just another stimulator for Zack's impending aneurism. Just another thing to try and pull him under, below the waves. He could be drowning, easy as ya please, but instead he treads and fights further.

"How ya doin'?"

He yells it to get over the wind scream.

Warmth lifts off his neck.

"Cold and tired."

Into his ear, delicate smooth, sultry soft.

And then.

"And I gotta piss."

Zack kneels to let him down.

"You could have said something."

"I didn't think it mattered," Cloud admits, licking his snow chapped lips.

He sways as he stands. Zack can't help but reach out and steady him.

"It does matter."

Cloud leans away, clear blue eye serious.

"I'm fine."

It's terribly pointed, intense.

Reluctantly, Zack backs away.

A towering grey plume marks their distance from the crash. It's intermittent against the indecisive and shifting albino veil. While Cloud takes care of his business Zack scans their stage. A radial assessment. Old habits and conditioning and just plain common sense.

Over to our left we have stinging white in absolute night, to our right we have cracked grey rock wall. If you look directly in front of us we have vast dead space. There are no landmarks but the fading smoke. Wait though. As he looks again toward that smoke something becomes clear.

"What the..."

It's not much of a warning.

His sword in hand speaks louder.

There's an addition to the otherwise sterile picture beyond. A heavier blackness.

"What is it?" Cloud asks.

He's right next to him.

"Can you walk?"

"Yes..."

"Get going," Zack suggests, and takes a step forward.

"Wait."

It's this hesitation that Zack, as a unit, has learned will get you in the most trouble.

The nothingness becomes an outline becomes a creature. Something probably stirred up by the shit storm earlier. Long snouted, four legged, it sniffs at the air, oil black tongue lolling. Zack eyes it, keen to find his cue. Maybe it's hissing, maybe it's growling, an evil and liquid sound (as wracking as the cold), but he can't hear over the tumult. There's a moment there, stretching intimately between the seconds, long enough to need an intermission, full feature length, but it's ultimately anticlimactic. The creature tosses its head and turns, going back through the black out and leaving them be.

The breath is collective.

"Hah," Zack huffs, almost a laugh.

It's enough of a sign to tell him there's a way off this orphaned plateau.

There's a passage to central land.

"Good news," he starts.

Cloud doesn't only sway this time, he heads to the ground, crumples like a paper doll.

Zack isn't fast enough to catch him.

.

.

.

He does find a cave (see also: alcove). Truth be told, it's barely enough to wedge in. Their feet flirt with the elements, but then that's miles better than putting out on the first date. He props Cloud against the inner wall, slow and easy. His sword he stands next to him.

Limp, cold, out cold, it's time to start full on worrying again. When he thinks about it though, leaning into the opposite corner, it's the perfect chance to clean him up. The best opportunity he'll get not to cause undue pain or (more) aversion.

There goes his remaining sleeve.

He peels back the strip over Cloud's mess of a mug and stops. Where to start? There's nothing left of the eye that he can tell, nothing to dance around or to remove (thank that good karma), just an ugly mess, a gaping hole. He dabs at the blood and where the skin has torn, wiping down his cheek and his chin and his throat. The cloth is soaked before long. It eases his mind little.

All things considered, it's about time for his break. He's been needing a cigarette since he came to, if he wanted to be honest, and usually he does. It's not a habit he's proud of, hell, he tries to do it as little as possible, as quietly as possible, but moments like these were manufactured for smokers.

His pack is crushed and soggy at the edges but the cigarettes inside are dry.

The heady whiff of tobacco smoke, the slow and easy drag semi-warm in his lungs... It always gets him.

He leans his head back and closes his eyes, the cold and strife stinging on.

.

.

.

_A cool, crisp morning. The Sun bursts thermal orange, burgundy red and yellow on the horizon, outlining a seam, the curve of the planet. It's bathing the land black in foreground, playing off the mako reactor's highest point. The air is clean and sharp and super-chilled in his lungs. Cliff diving waterfalls gleam colourless as bleached stone. Birds call._

_Couldn't be anywhere else but Gongaga. _

_He pulls a long breath in, full to bursting, and lets it out._

_Beautiful._

_The ground begins to shake._

_Minute at first but now unmistakable._

_He can hardly hold his ground._

_The land in shadow splits and falls away._

_Waterfalls sputter red dust._

_Bird song swaps for the shuffle of sudden flight._

_Standing here, on the edge, he won't survive._

_He'll fall, and fall, and fall._

_._

.

._  
_

Zack jerks forward.

He'd fallen asleep.

Fantastic.

The simple habit of checking his cell phone reminds him that he has no idea how long they've been stranded. Time is solid here, down right immovable. The fact that he has no signal, no way to reach someone. say, Kunsel, or even the Director, another compelling side note. An equally compelling death note. It's somewhat lighter in the blistering ice patterns out there, and the wind seems to be down. He can see twice as far as he could the night before.

That doesn't mean much but it improves his overall devastated moral. The concept of comprehensive sight and ample response time is too much to ask for, but he can go on and dream. He'll not crack, whither and worry.

Just yet.

He looks to Cloud. That furnace-like heat pouring off him earlier, it's remained. He's shivering regardless, chest heaving, sweat beading his upper lip. Red has soaked through the white strip covering his eye, the pattern like a flower bloom. His lips are blue and pulled tight, teeth chattering behind. They were as red in unison with that stained bandage hours ago.

He groans.

"Cloud?"

At feet apart all he has to do is lean.

His arm twitches, starting to lift.

"_Don't_ _touch me_," the boy bursts out.

He grips the sides of his head.

"Fuck, it hurts, it _hurts_."

"Shit," Zack spits.

He crowds in, set to investigate.

"Where?"

A shiver and a moan, but no answer.

_You're a moron._

Zack bites his tongue.

He should have been there, should have been, should have been, shit. _Fucking idiot. _And this is what he'd been afraid of. The kid couldn't be worse off now, freezing and bearing the full weight of his injury for Shinra knows how long. You can't afford to be careless in situations such as these. You can't turn your back or dim for a moment. He knows all of this and yet he still dozed off.

He doesn't wait for Cloud to break his silence, instinct gives him a bear hug. Arms go round fully and then some. If hearing him protest and whimper rather than agonizing and suffering means invading his space, he's all for it. He'll ramp up his body heat, talk him down, make it better.

They've been here before. Just working backwards.

He might not have a sleeping bag but he does have a jacket twice the size of this boy, and skin to skin is truly their best option. He starts pulling off his gloves. Has to release him to remove his jacket, thermal undershirt (now sleeveless), and his dark blue, for a 3rd class, turtleneck, but there's nowhere for him to go. While he whimpers and whines and writhes and wishes for an end, Zack has to get inside his layers.

"_...shoot me, shoot me, please_..."

Oh, how lucky he'd have been to get _protesting _and _whimpering_.

The violent delirium sustains as he unzips Cloud's insulated jacket, pulling up each sleeve cuff, shaking each arm out. It's unceremonious but it gets the job done. Zack's sure there would be tears-every gasp hitching, every half-word croaked, constricted-but he doesn't seem capable. That alone is tearing him to ribbons. He doesn't really know if this is a good idea anyway, getting him stripped down, but at this point anyidea counts for something.

"..._please_..."

Miserable, exhausted.

It's pathetic. It's terrible.

The sluggish seconds are desperate pleas to his ear, hot spikes to his guts.

But the kid's losing his steam.

"Take it easy. I've gotta—"

"Don't!"

Or so he thought.

Cloud surges up.

He gets Zack in the bridge of the nose with his forehead.

He has to blink the compulsory tears away but he manages to get his belt undone. He pulls him close as he does, limp and dry sobbing and all.

He's the bad guy here.

The fucking monster.

Mechanisms to get him by, he constructs a credo and plays it on repeat.

_It's for his own good, his own good, his own..._

Cloud squirms, feebly pushing himself up the alcove wall. Zack works on his thermal undershirt meanwhile, that movement complicating his numb digits. He finally just bars him, fed up, arm crossing his chest, and pulls both garments, undershirt and infantry colours, cleanly over his spiky head. He's as white as snow underneath, pale as sheer ice. Bruises track up his ribs but the skin is overall unbroken.

Zack gathers him in an arm and tosses his doubly large and doubly insulated jacket over his own shoulders. He pushes his arms through the sleeves and reinstates that embrace, folding him snug inside. Cloud's untouched cheek hovers above Zack's collarbone, still resisting, still refusing to give up the ghost. This drives home a revelation. This is something he's thought about before, under different circumstances of course, but it's all about how he would feel, how he would smell.

As it stands, this is quite a lot less reverent than Zack had thought up.

"You're okay," he soothes.

He's getting warmer. Zack can feel it and his heartbeat as his chest expands. Slower and slower it goes, nearly at sync with his own. It could be the pain (the insane pain) subsiding, or his body giving out again, but he calms presently. Muscles relaxed, shoulders deflated, breathing sedate, his battery's charge appearing to have given out once more.

Zack pulls him into his lap, closing the small gap there.

"Take it easy."

Useless statements.

"You'll be fine."

Wild hypothetics.

Cloud's response is a chesty, inaudible thing.

"You're fine," Zack urges, "just relax."

"I'm sorry," Cloud whispers.

Small, disarming.

That should be his apology.

Zack grimaces.

"Don't be, it's not your fault. Just hang in there, pal."

He adds.

"I fucked up."

And it feels dry.

.

.

.

They're stationary there for a time, locked like this, bare chest to bare chest. Cloud has no idea the position he's in, legs bordering Zack's hips, not an inch between them. It's a mockery of his quiet, uninterrupted thoughts. His safe and secret fantasies. Not so bad off he has to flesh out reminders of their situation, no, but Zack does have to look around and see where they are just to solidify reality.

He's not at the end of his rope, but it's been fraying, if you hadn't noticed.

"You gonna be able to move?" he asks at length.

Cloud gives him a nod, warm and sane for the moment.

His state fluctuating.

"Alright."

They bundle back up and he pulls him to his feet.

Not a word goes between them.

They travel until nightfall.

.

.

.

Food rears as the next inevitable worry.

And they still haven't found shelter.

He's managed to keep Cloud sane and moving and awake for the remainder of the day (plenty of scary points, yes, where he would waver and moan and drag on, but they were smoothed out), so there's something. His already ragged optimism is taking another hit. More of that long term worry he can't shake. If they don't find a way through this static border of mountain he can kiss all theories of saving Cloud goodbye. He can kiss 1st class goodbye.

As if he'd forget.

But good things come to those who wait, and patience is a virtue. Or so his mother used to say.

As he's looking ahead, same as he has for hours, truly, mind bent on steaming soup and molten coffee and bed sheets, he can see it. A glimmering light, distant through the bleak curtain but very much there. By some earth-splitting tectonic action a rift in the mountain crust formed. It looks wide enough to slide through. That glimmering comes from the other side.

This is pure and stupid elation.

He sends Cloud through first, taking up the rear. The fit scrapes and catches his elbows, gnaws and drags at his hips, but he makes it through. Cloud's going somewhat smoother. It deposits them into a wide clearing, a mirror of the previous stage: open, blank and bare. One thing stands different though. A warehouse. Two levels of metal panels, no windows, and high hanging flood lamps.

This is pure, stupid relief.

"What now?" Cloud asks.

That's just the five million gil question, now isn't it?

"We go inside," Zack answers.

.

.

.

.


	4. part 4

**tell all**_ by frooit_

part four

_ff7 semi-au - zack pov, eventual zack/cloud_  
"just as things couldn't seem to get any worse..."  
_ updated as of 3/21/11_

_._

_._

_._

_._

_Northern Continent - location unknown (approx. twenty hours after crash)_

They're not that far off, maybe thirty meters, bearing straight and sure toward the clearing. Flurries, like steam curling off a hot spring, dance and skim over the smooth plain of snow. It's destitution. Nothing appears unusual yet, which is even better. Or worse. There are no vehicles, not the whiff of fire or even minimal signs of life, like a stray print (animal or human alike) in the forever white. The split in the mountain must have been used as some sort of escape route in another time. Easy access to the ocean on the far side. No one's here now as they tread closer, not a rumour or suggestion. Whoever had occupied this place must have cleared out, or been cleared out, and fast.

A few more feet, just a few more steps, and they're golden.

But it's Cloud who speaks up.

"Zack, I gotta tell you something."

Always too damn good to be true.

He's far behind, voice just a distortion late coming. Zack waits but his eyes never divert from that structure north. Wind and snow and stinging cold, the pull and the drag and the weight of this task. He's so ready to be done, to be successful and call it a night.

The direction of the oncoming gust changes. It sweeps across his chest now, rifles the hair hanging over his forehead. Something in the atmosphere has gone stale, odd, off, heavier in a way. Those flood lights flicker, blink, wink. It's like a beckon, a tease. Cloud moves up but stays well behind, just outside Zack's reach.

"They're coming for you," he says.

Zack turns now.

"Who?"

Has to correct and tilt down to look him in the face. Makeshift bandage aside, pouty but blue lips aside, he can see the fear and the trepidation there.

Okay, he's listening, he's fully invested.

"Shinra."

"Yeah, I know. But I hate to say it," he scratches the back of his head, "I don't think it'll be soon. They won't catch wind of this for a while. We're pretty much stuck out here until they really miss us. Bullshit protocol and no radio."

He glances over his shoulder. They're in sight of the main doors and stopped dead in the open. Two sliding steel sheets, a lamp craned overhead. If they haven't been detected by whatever might be lurking nearby there wasn't anything nearby. All these little signs make him anxious to get inside. There could be a radio in there. There could be a fleet of crates branded with Shinra's logo, filled with commodities the likes of which he can't even fathom. Maybe food, maybe bullets, maybe materia or imported goods. Could find cots and blankets and running water and maybe, if he's lucky, if he's really damn lucky, an arm chair to kick back in. Could have himself a long, slow puff.

So close.

"No. This mission... It's..."

"What, Cloud?"

He doesn't like this.

His palms sweat and itch inside his gloves.

Damn, he wants that cigarette.

"I didn't know anything about you, see."

The blond's voice grows higher.

"You were just a name, honestly. We were briefed an hour before we left, before you even arrived. They took us all, even the damn pilot, into a room and said... that you were unstable, wild. You had to be..."

It's a rushed verbal blur. He catches his breath at the end.

"I didn't know, Zack," he moans. "They..."

A quick swallow.

"Shinra wants you dead."

A blink, a furrow of the brow.

Zack stands and soaks this in.

Cloud continues.

"They put this assignment together in order to take you out, I guess. Told us you were a traitor, giving intel to the Wutai. We were supposed to lead you in to a point, a warehouse. The crash wasn't part of it, something went wrong."

He gestures to the quiet, singular building, more the villain now than a saviour.

"You can't go in there."

This is hardly good news.

Time is tight enough as it is.

"Okay, okay," Zack waves his hands. "Who briefed you?"

He knew it was coming but he had to be sure.

"It was Sephiroth."

Ya sleep with a guy a few times and then he wants to kill you.

.

.

.

_Midgar - SOLDIER Executive level #1 (six weeks prior)_

Just like with a moth to light, Zack's always been drawn to the pretty ones. And this one is certainly that, to say the least. All the right aspects, all the right attitude. Curving and sharp and defined architecture, Sephiroth is like a fine painting, or no, he's got it now—a statue. Made of marble and blood and sweat and tears and pale, dead, unmoving discipline. He's liquid fire, blue flame. Like the twisting and burning in your gut after a good run. The twisting and burning after a good hit.

Zack's not a play boy. He wouldn't sleep with you to sleep with you. There's no running tally. You have to give him something in return and it needs to be appealing enough on a level not many people would think he entertained. He might be a dope quick to fall in love, but he's there for the cerebral connection, the personality, the compatibility. Sex is a nice bonus though.

Very nice.

When you hear so much about a person from rumours, from horror stories, from hero stories, Shinra regale, half-caught conversations, whispers, and your own perceptions, it's hard not to think you know them even before you've met, face to face. Whether it was worth his time even giving it a shot never touched Zack's mind. He followed a simple rule when it came down to following an attraction: don't listen to doubt. About half the time that bull-headed determination paid off for him.

"An honour to finally meet you."

The other half, it included but was not limited to, crashing and burning.

He puts his hand out.

He doesn't know if he should have called him sir.

He looks to the Director, sucking on his teeth.

Sephiroth sees his open hand, fingers in cracked and peeling black gloves (Shinra issue pieces of crap—goes through a pair a week) and doesn't move to accept it.

The silence is bone crushing.

"Um..."

Zack takes the hand back, balling it into a fist at the small of his spine. The split leather creaks.

Those dazzling jade eyes, reptilian, feline, startling, they make Zack's stomach drop.

Sephiroth's eventual response is a noise, a vibration deep in his throat.

"Hmm."

It's enough to drive Zack crazy.

.

.

.

_Northern Continent - location unknown_

He grabs Cloud by the shoulders and walks him, beyond his desire (and maybe his better judgment), back to the ridge, close enough to blend in and not be seen. He's still so damn warm through his thick layers and Zack's gloves. That small, pale face of his flushed and framed in hair. It's damp, clinging and depressed over the crown of his skull where Zack's bandage stretches. Spiky wedges come low over his equally golden yellow eyebrow. That negated left eye blocked out, red on white.

_But he's still beautiful._

It's a quick half thought, impossible to censor.

He shakes his head, slush flying free.

"So what's in there then?"

"I don't know."

"Right... You're just the decoy."

Cloud frowns.

"Is there anything else out here—buildings, settlements?"

"I don't know..."

He hangs his head.

"Are you supposed to give a signal or something, or do I just pop in?"

"I don't know!"

Zack chews his lip, hands still on the boy's shoulders.

Despite the obvious concerns, he's got to go in. Maybe a firing squad. Or the whole thing rigged to blow. This isn't the time to be timid or coy. He's never believed in playing it safe anyway. He believes in getting the job done and doing the right thing. Above all else. Including self preservation.

"Stay here."

He lifts his hands off the kid, connection lost (wishing very much that _out of sight, out of mind_ would apply here), and makes for the warehouse.

"What, no!"

Cloud's got him by the jacket sleeve in a shot, but he's just being pulled along behind, not nearly strong enough to hold him back.

His boot heels kick up hillocks of snow.

"You _can't_ go in there. Didn't you hear me?"

"This is _me_ we're talking about," Zack says.

He grins, full and bright and fake as hell.

"I didn't know what to think before, about what they said about you. Everyone else was angry, fired up, wanted a piece. He said terrible things about you. I thought you'd do something..."

Cloud sounds ashamed.

"When I was screaming..."

Zack halts.

Sephiroth had assured them he was rouge, wild, a spy. Crazy with mako poisoning, strong as an ox. Cloud's only rational thought was that he would hurt him, kill him, worse. No wonder he'd been freaking out, screaming, telling him, _please, oh please, just shoot me_. Fuck. Compounded with the sudden crash, his injury, Zack's decidedly weird behaviour from before—he can hardly blame him.

"But, you ended up saving my life."

_No, I haven't_.

"Look," Zack starts.

He has a despairing amount of trouble pulling away from the grip.

"We can't stay here. There's nothing out here. Not a damn thing but ice and more ice and spooky animals, we know that. If we move on or stay here," he points to Cloud, "we're dead of exposure or ambush, and that's an absolutely. We need shelter."

"If you go in—"

"Do you know that for certain?"

Cloud closes his mouth.

"I'm going alone."

And opens it right back up.

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_Midgar - SOLDIER dorms (four weeks prior)_

But it turns out to all be hero worship.

This isn't the first nor the last time they're alone together like this. Just the two of them, side by side, a room and a bed at their disposal. The proximity can't be denied, no, but they're miles apart. Zack's blinking up at the ceiling, his bare chest rising and falling, eyelashes fluttering, snapping like camera flashes. He figured this would be different somehow.

He does a lot of figuring.

"What are you thinking?"

It's out of character.

Zack looks over.

Sephiroth's incandescent eyes blaze back.

"Nothing," he answers.

He's been his shadow for the last two weeks, following him into hell's backyard and back out again. Missions and assignments and orders tailored for an aspiring SOLDIER. There truly wasn't a moment to think of anything else. How he was going to get a fresh pack of smokes for tomorrow, how he was going to skip out so he could send money and a note to his parents about his progress... All of that was put on hold because of this man, this silver rush of hair and a quirk of a smile sharp as a sickle.

The surrounding air smells of their encounter, musky and humid.

"I'll have you and your family terminated if you tell anyone about this."

It's said in such a way, with such a clinical coolness and ease, that Zack knew it to be fact.

_Terminated._

He'll never forget that.

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_Northern Continent - location unknown_

"You can't. I won't let you," Cloud protests.

"Like to see you try."

"I'm feeling better," he tries. "An hour ago I took an Ether or Elixir, or whatever, I can't remember the difference. It was from the med kit. I can help. I've been trained. You can't do this alone."

Med kit. He'd forgotten about that, hadn't he? Classy.

At least that explains why he's been so talkative and alert.

"If it was in the med kit it was probably an Elixir. Besides, that's not a good enough reason. You're running on empty, you'll just hold me back. You're—"

It didn't feel right to finish. Felt like he was inching into a scary place. It had sounded something like _too important _either way, but that expression pointed back at him, resigned and firm, could almost be a knowing one. He won't allow Cloud to be put in danger again. Period. End of story. Not an option.

"I'm done discussing this."

"Wait, no! Listen to me!"

"Stay there."

"You can't leave me, you asshole. I don't have a weapon! What if that creature comes back?"

The twinge of a headache wanting to take over and choke and blind and corrupt is almost to the limits of what it takes to change his tune. He's not thrilled, and usually much more stubborn than this, but his shoulders drop and his arms hang all the same. He's torn. Because he's right.

He can't leave him here.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

"Alright, fine."

He gives him the recovered rifle and every clip of ammo he can find on his person. That's about ninety rounds. That may seem like a lot, ninety (hell, almost a hundred), but if Cloud can't shoot because of his disability it's a drop in accuracy that could get him killed. No accounting for sheer ability either.

They're not in good shape.

"Now, when we get to the door..."

Zack has his broad sword in hand, nerves on hold but humming and thrumming and not to be forgotten.

"...be ready to fire. Split second. Short bursts."

"Okay."

Cloud takes a breath. He pops the safety off the rifle, his trigger finger he rests against the trigger guard, waiting, ready. No helmets, no supplies, little armour, every step deliberate, slow, they approach. The naked entrance bulb glares, outlining the fall of the snow in contrasting relief, like specks of falling cotton or a swarm of insects. Once in front of the doors they wait for a beat, Zack looking to Cloud, Cloud looking back, both separated by the expanse in between, lit by the bulb above.

They nod.

Zack gets a hand on the metal handle—sword on stand by in his right, business end down—Cloud off to his side, trigger finger ready to squeeze. He braces and gives a great tug. The door slides easily enough but the sound echoes back through the insides of the warehouse. A greater noise follows, drilling down any hungry silence.

The rifle discharge kicks the muzzle of the gun up in Cloud's hands. He lets off several rounds and then steps to the side, pressing against the warehouse's corrugated steel skin.

"What did you see?"

"It was just boxes, to tell the truth."

He looks frazzled.

"No hordes of murderous soldiers?"

"No."

They wait.

"Alright," Zack says.

He shakes out that cigarette from his busted pack and pops it in his mouth. It seemed like the proper reaction. The click and snap of his lighter draws Cloud's attention. He watches from the far side of the threshold, the wind switching up again, dragging a great breath over his back, disheveling his ice-clotted hair and coming to Zack's face. The flame just ready to lick the end of his cigarette blows out.

Distant voices carry with it.

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_Midgar - SOLDIER dorms (two weeks prior)_

That childlike wonder, that adoration, it crumbles down. He's neutered of the need for that role model, that idol, over night. Zack never felt closer to a nervous break down in his life. What he is to Sephiroth on an emotional level you could find in a dog, a cat, a parakeet; something to follow the rules, to not speak up until spoken to, to submit.

It was never exactly nonconsensual, the sex. He never said no, or chickened out, not once, but he also firmly believed that if he did, pulling away or wincing or booking it down the corridor, his parents wouldn't be there to accept that note or money when he did manage to find the time.

More than just stiff and jagged, Sephiroth was a paranoid. He carried an underlying edge, a psychosis. He soaked in it, wore it like a cloak. His stability was nonexistent, his self control little. It grew worse the longer Zack worked with him. As the days dragged out, his chin held high, arms at his sides, proper, he felt more like an abused care taker or pupil than anything else. He'd come back for a glimpse after being gone for weeks and Zack would be waiting, just a gimmick, just a blank face, dying to run.

.

.

.

He begs, oh yes, he does, for the reassignment.

The Director's knowing grin hits him like a kick in the teeth.

_Terminated._

It isn't worth it.

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_Northern Continent - location unknown_

As he's bringing the lighter back up for a second time he stops; the cigarette lights regardless. He puffs out a grey plume subconsciously and it's whisked away along with the flame. Voices. A confusion of them. The over-sweet smells hangs.

"I can't see from here, but I know someone's in there," Cloud whispers.

"I'll take a look."

Zack edges around the corner.

Just going to lean out and sneak a peak.

Easy as that.

Several lines of nondescript crates, munition boxes, and mechanical equipment stacked on pallets block a good portion of the view in. There's a path around them on either side, but it's tight. Forklifts and work benches crowd the walls where he can see in and a metal rail staircase runs up to a landing following the circumference of the warehouse walls, passing over the double door entrance. The look may have been brief and decidedly guarded but a gun shot rings out as he's leaning back. It zings a muscle twitch away from the side of Zack's face.

Sudden heat, a split in the air.

The cigarette is torn from his lips, caught by the bullet.

He jerks back. His boot heel slicks off the wet rubber gasket lining the door's seam.

Cloud's lone eye is wide.

"I think they saw me," Zack says, licking his lips.

He lifts his sword.

Frantic yelled commands pick up from inside. That, and footsteps. A smoke bomb goes off, the spewed gasses hissing and billowing. He's as ready as he'll ever be for this thing. If this is going to be his end, if there's really no way out of this, he might as well make it such an end. Go down in a blaze of glory. Become a fable. A bedtime story for their kids.

Hey, the world goes on.

Red laser sight beams thread out from inside, all pointed at an angle, pointed where they last saw Zack. He can't begin to count them. They gleam in the smoke screen and distort in the blustering snow. Seconds, flashing on, flashing off. Roving and whirling, they grow stronger. The troops are closer, edging around that blank space in the crates and boxes and junk. They're focused.

The following silence is unsettling.

No message yelled out.

No threat or bargain.

They really just want to kill him.

_What they don't know though..._

Zack grabs for the scavenged grenade (and it's no damn smoke bomb either).

His conspiratory signal reaches Cloud, who nods curtly.

He can tell he's nervous.

As he should be.

Taking the grenade in hand, Zack pops the pin out, counts to three. He has to lob it hard enough to ricochet off the far wall and around the pallets to the soldiers behind. Easy, sure. It's a quick toss. They don't have to wait long for the outcome. The explosion rattles the walls, their jaws, the snow pile on the roof above. Zack is charging in immediately after, rounding the blind corner, slashing at the first hazy outline, lunging at the next. The area beyond the stacked junk is clear and open.

He shuts off and doesn't think if he knows these soldiers.

If he knows their names.

Has led them.

Given them advice.

_They're trying to kill you._

Cloud follows, opening up into the chests of three advancing troopers.

The smoke screen is clearing.

He takes down two, but the third...

Zack body checks him indiscriminately into a wooden crate and slices into the throat of another, fluid. It's a wide arcing swing, arm at full span. A spray of red follows it and slaps across Cloud's arm, speckles his hair and throat. Zack hopes the warmth is some kind of relief.

The blast has spread out the troops but there are still so damn many of them.

Bullets whiz and pop.

He catches one from behind, another soon after. One almost gets a shot off but he chops the hand holding the pistol clean from the trooper's arm. The scream, the bellow. He can block that out, but he can't dodge the graze of a lucky shot as it stings into his side. It throbs in tandem with his pulse. He grits his teeth and punches out the closest trooper. Helmet not withstanding the soldier goes sprawling.

He hears a cry from Cloud then, like a spark charging the air, and can't help but look. Pinned behind a crate, ducked down, he's not firing a shot.

It could be fear, doubt, a raw nerve.

"I'm out!" Cloud screams.

_Oh, shit._

Zack's knocked back then, like the kick from a fucking horse, and goes flying. His head connects with the poured concrete floor, _crack_, and all the sound is suddenly, thankfully, turned down. Too hard-headed for that to shut him down though. He's covered a good distance, sliding on his back. Can still see and feel and damn his side burns, so that's good, but he did lose grip on his sword. He feels for it now, like working through dreamscape. There's the tang of copper on his tongue, a dull static in his ears.

He's finding he's blinking rapidly, trying to settle his vision.

Not much can put Zack Fair on his ass.

"Kudos," he wheezes.

He looks up to have a sword halted just as it was about to create a place in his head. The blade caught on a double, a twin, _his_ blade, held in the trembling hands of Cloud. This small-statured boy, he swings the two blades up and pushes the trooper back, skewering him in the middle as he falters.

"They have a machine," he informs Zack, voice clear but urgent.

A hum and clang and whir arrests the air, as if on a cue.

It's muscling out the fewer gun shots for supremacy.

"A_ machine_?"

They huddle low behind a group of forklifts, biding time.

They'll be overrun soon.

"Yeah. Flung you across the room."

"Oh, so that's what that was."

He stretches and cracks his spine and neck, listening intently on the commotion and confusion around them. The air's just a thin wisp of white now. A corpse lies to their right, fresh slash wounds steaming in the chill. Zack looks at this and does a double take. He reaches over and grabs the orphaned gun and ammo left slung around the body like a bandoleer. Petting the body down further his fingers drag across something that makes him grin.

"You seem to be better with that sword anyway, so I'll use these."

He loads and locks the new machine gun and flashes two found materia.

Green.

For nature, life, victory.

A good start, but they'll need to know what they are.

"Give me one at least," Cloud insists.

Zack huffs.

"Needy, aren't we?"

He hands over a billiard ball sized orb.

It's warm to the touch.

"Fried out robots. Great, big fireballs. This'll be fun," Zack says.

Cloud looks unamused.

"If you call this fun."

"And you wanted to join Shinra?"

They're interrupted by that steady whir and clang.

"Here goes nothin'," Zack says and absorbs the materia.

It melts through his jacket sleeve, assimilating into forearm.

It's a sensation you won't soon get used to. The invasion, the alien thoughts, calming and warm as they may be, yes, but they still throw you for a loop. Incomplete and dizzying and vague. What's your memory and what's not is a toss up. And the concentration, or level, of the materia alters (amplifies) this effect. The more sensitive you are the lower concentration you start with, see. At least he wasn't one of those. Otherwise, he'd be signing an admission to the psych ward.

He's SOLDIER 3rd class, dammit. Takes mako showers in the morning and eats materia for lunch.

Well, not really.

The trip isn't bad but it still takes him a moment to level out.

Whispering, breathy voices. Frantic. Frenzied. Not forceful but constant.

He's vacant and then chimes, "It's lightning."

Never quite sure where that information does come from but he never doubts it.

Blind faith, as it were, still has a hold on Zack.

.

.

.

The machine is barely tall enough to fit inside the confines of the warehouse. The ceiling goes up enough to accommodate an airship or two, but the machine itself still has to crouch and scrape along. Robotic arms swing, vice-like clamps opening and closing on the ends, torso humanoid. Its legs are spindly and many, spider-esque. Shoulder-mounted turrets move independently of the unit itself. Laser sights pan, pan, pan; not just bullets but missiles too. Its "head" is a bundle of antennae and strobe-like sensors, skin armour plated and sealed in matte red paint.

A numeric black _eight _and the Shinra motif is stenciled on its shoulder and breast plate.

_Eight won't be your lucky number._

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	5. part 5

**tell all**_ by frooit_

part five

_ff7 semi-au - eventual zack/cloud_  
"he fights a losing battle."  
_ updated as of 3/21/11_

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_Northern Continent - Warehouse (approx. twenty-one hours after crash)_

He's hopeless.

He'll only admit to that once, so hold it dear.

Can stay as positive and smiley and chipper, to the point of annoyance, to the sheer edge of insanity, all he wants, but he can't, and he won't, lie to Cloud. His face is undoubtedly (it's greasy wet) smeared with blood and soot and the dying good hope of the day. His uniform is drenched from the melted snow carried on his shoulders, frosted on his arms, and trapped in the spikes of his hair. His overall demeanor is sobered, pointed but the stubborn twitch of a smile burns his cheeks all the same.

Despite the run of bad luck (that's what he's calling it, even if luck has little to do with it), despite the bad news (and the spear in his side, the fatigue, the shortness of breath, the aching bones and dizzy head), he's still who he is. You can't keep a good Zack down and he's proved that over and over again just as he's proving it now. He'll be the one to give Death a great big smile at the end rather than not, if you can believe it. Not so much out of egotism or even courage, because he knows he can.

Eager, defiant, to a fault.

This smile here isn't a lie and the aching in his jaw can attest to that, this is called long suffering. If you were to go under the surface tension, under the carried weight and to the source, to the naked under belly, you'd find he is starting to crack. It's hairline thin but sure as day. Maybe he knows this and maybe he doesn't, ignorance and all that... but it's surely a matter of time. He's surely, like any really good hero, doomed. Only had to see about a crew and himself in the past (his ideals, their obedience) and that wasn't a problem, to be honest, to be serious, that was duty, that was governing a crew of Shinra's best (and sometimes not), but this here is hardly on the same level. He's miles away from conceiving Cloud as another soldier or an aspiring comrade.

He's his damsel in distress.

If he were still tangled up in that bastard's web would he have just the same outlook as he does now? You have to wonder. Does he have just that much inherent good in him or is he really just that dumb, just that quick to fall in love? It must be equal parts. The situations are alarmingly alike. Whether he's fighting against fellow members of Shinra or the Wutai, it doesn't really matter, they're just as disassociated and cruel as the other. He wouldn't have been a traitor though, an exile, but... and this is a good one, he would have been trapped. Had to live in fear of an eventuality, reminded every day.

That glorious bastard (_Sephiroth_), that suffocating (gangrenous) infatuation... it's salt on a wound. It hadn't been a clean cut, those weeks ago, hasn't had the time yet to heal. A wound, a gouge, a burn and soon a scar embossed, sometime later maybe forgotten. Only glimmering false memories now, him and Shinra, sand sifting through his fingers. Like their damned mako reactor sinking into nothingness in his dream. Oh, the symbolism.

That grandiose Shinra image though, he yearns for it, like a deserted man will want for drink.

To keep in tandem with everything everyone back home and in Shinra has already said about him, the rumours, the exaggerations, the slander, the truths, he might as well entertain delusions, might as well huff on the pipe dream haze and want to be SOLDIER 1st class regardless of the current altercations and the eventual outcome. Can't deny that he still wants to be he-who-shall-not-be-named, to make his parents proud (and dead) and get the girl (_boy_)—dammit, _dammit, I'll make 'em proud_, but why?

He's been screwed.

And he's beating a dead horse.

_Really, so stop._

If he could switch his brain off, tune the monologue out, he would. Mind over matter, come on, but this goes deeper than suggestion or fancy, or common sense, SOLDIER is still in every aspect of his make up. It's in the way he walks, talks, and comes to his conclusions. He is a product of Shinra, the product. Fueling the cycle, perpetuating the SOLDIER fantasy. Just a tool. He built himself up around that picture full colour and glossy and beautiful, like a war time poster, an advertisement, catchy and loud and omnipresent. The solid black letters would say: SOLDIER 1st Class is...

A farce.

_Fuck._

A sham.

_That's not it._

A lie.

_Goddammit, stop._

So he's a lie.

_No._

And his damsel.

Dingy, dying and desperate.

_STOP._

Is just as relevant.

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.

Zack takes a deep, deep breath.

And jumps out from behind the huddle of forklifts. Cloud's alarmed curse fades into the battle ground symphony still heavy and tense in the congested space. He sprints all out for the machine, this No. 8, gun muzzle concentrated on its numerous, spindled legs, shells bursting from the barrel electrified, as bright as the beginning of life, materia showing in his forearm. Bullets _ting_ and tear into plated armour. His mouth open wide, cry of war thumping out.

The bullets drill holes and divots, about as destructive as insect bites.

He's not betting on doing a lot of outright damage with the gun.

He dunks and dodges the machine's answering rain of bullets, its sweeping arms, and finds a metal crate to hide behind on the rebound. Rolling to the side for another crate he pulls the trigger again and the spray connects, sparks on impact, flashing blue and white, on and off.

That's what he wants.

The materia's charge crawling like palsied fingers.

That's what he's betting on.

Cloud joins him, picking off the mess of soldiers he didn't stomp out on the first assault. He's covering his back hacking and chopping and slicing away but he stays close to the exit. The troops are spread out and disoriented, giving Zack little to fear there. The kid's proving his training and worth, out of the corner of his eye, on the edge of his perception. Blood sprays, metal sings, cries rise and fall, ebb and flow, like the natural flow of the ocean, like the natural glare of his good eye. Cloud's committed to living, far beyond reasoning.

A swinging arm crashes down on his crate. He dodges and rolls. The machine scrapes and clanks, heaving and clumsy, spidery legs wanting for purchase but receiving little on the smooth floor. It whines (_rrrrrr_) and readjusts, spitting round after round at Zack as he appears, laser sights crossing and wheeling. The thing can barely move. How they even got it in here is a mystery. They might have built it as it stands or there's an opening on the far side, the side they haven't seen, that they don't know about. Either way, here it is, bumping equipment and shelves and the lot, an easy target. It's far too cumbersome to react as it should (trammeled like a pest) but its armour is thick.

It jerks and halts now, a jet of steam escapes.

The noise resounds and time stretches long.

Zack quickly reloads.

Cloud looks on.

His live ammunition has disabled a leg but the machine doesn't stay entirely immobile for long. Devoid of the emotion of fear, devoid of the physicality of fatigue, No. 8 continues attacking, making the area Zack can work with smaller and smaller and its own reach wider and wider. The struts left undamaged (there are five) manage despite, twitching along. Turrets come alive, whirring a cyclone of lead and strife and defiance, aerating the concrete after Zack as he retreats behind more bordering crates. He retains his onslaught, firing around the corner, sure and relentless. It's blind but it's unyielding, the air statically charged and alive. Lightning snaps on every report, his arm growing numb from the jolt and the heat and his head swollen with incessant alien voices, the voices from his materia. They're angry as wild fire, not a word or splintered thought to break through the cacophony.

Another support crumbles.

It's a blindingly awesome affair, but he doesn't elude the swipe that retaliates it.

_Sucker punch._

An arm shoots out from inside the flowering luminescent eclipse, first dispatching his cover and then swinging back to rocket him up and back for the second time. He collides with stacked pallets at the doors they came in through, his spine and broad shoulders busting and splintering the wood. He falls back to ground level, boots striking first, loose and unstable ankles sending him forward. He sprawls out on his hands, his wind gone, his vision blurred, gossamer. He spits a ribbon of sticky blood and it slaps the concrete, the design haphazard.

The machine sends missiles screaming after.

Two ribbons zig-zagging.

He can just make them out as he looks up.

He doesn't blink.

_Smile._

The shells explode mid flight, wafted heat drying his face.

He winces at the flare.

Cloud's on him like that, Zack's gun in hand.

Unwilling (unable) to move just yet Zack tugs him down to his level, another two missiles whizzing by and exploding into the double doors beyond. The staircase bolted above crashes down in pieces, blocking but not shutting them in. They're shielded from the debris and the scorch but they're still in one shit location. Might as well be presented garnish and all.

He throws Cloud up and toward the blown out doors, following himself, bullets and metallic workings hissing and whining in dismayed revelation. The machine reaches out, clamp wide, yawning, willing, wanting, but it's too far off. Cloud half crawls and half runs for the permanent porthole, wet boot rubber losing traction, sword and machine gun white-knuckled. Zack climbs over the remains of the landing and staircase and passes through right behind him. Chill immediately arrests his lungs and stings at his eyes. Snow falls where it was quiet before, confusing the distance to the mountain ahead. Close quarters might have been in their favour, sure, but _fight or flight_ reared its ugly head and he plans on having them live for another day, even if it might be spent freezing to death.

As long as it's on their terms.

"Are you okay?" Cloud blurts.

Almost lost to the gust.

Zack has no chance to respond. The machine's tearing through corrugated steal, taking part of the structure's roof and support beams and paneling with it. The screech is forever long, unable to pass so easily through the cold air. The warehouse wobbles and buckles and folds in on itself as the machine breaks free, standing at full height now, towering and impossible and bigger than God. Snow rises in a flurry around the settling metal heap. The warehouse is demolished just like that. No more shelter or safe haven. Any units or supplies left inside likely to be flattened.

Zack takes the gun from Cloud's heaving hands and directs it square, No. 8 in his sights.

He yells, "Just run!"

His ribs sting on inhale.

Cloud listens and books it across the ice plain.

Back to the rift in time.

The discharge from his gun goes on in bright bouquets. Bullets ejected via combustion burst out through orange flame and charge electrically via materia. The hair on his neck stands on end, his head light. The colour range is red to orange to yellow to blue to white. The rounds smash and tear into Shinra manufactured armour, denting deep, sending bolts and wires free. The electrical charge seems to have lost its former bite though as No. 8 crashes on uninhibited. He grimaces and back peddles, holding his side. It's subconscious, out of his control. Can't feel it through his glove but he's sure it's there: the wetness and the warmth of blood.

He's been shot.

That lucky graze wasn't so.

His aim is sure and steady, everything you'd expect from a SOLDIER 3rd class, but No. 8 aggresses mindlessly, furiously, just as well. It's closing the short distance, gaining ground, taking every bullet and zapping charge in heavy stride and soulless indifference. Even with crippled legs and now failing weapons systems it glides ahead, stomping in succession. It hasn't fired a shot since breaking free of the warehouse. As it reaches him it lunges out an arm, clear and clean as the lunge of a blade.

And catches him by the throat.

The robotic clamp seizes down, perilously strong.

Zack drops his gun and shoots both arms up. He's lifted from his feet as he wrenches at the contraption. He can't get even a fingertip between his neck and the machinery there. No hope to yell or call out or take even the tiniest of breath. He's bereft, depleted, dying, done, but he claws and kicks away, teeth grinding, lungs protesting. The red eye of No. 8, the lone blaze, stares him down, telescoping lenses focusing, computing. The resonant materia roars on but in a muffled way, through water or padding or his hands over his ears, screaming where he can't.

His eyes roll up to the snow-speckled sky dark and empty, tears streaming, jaw working.

_You can't be done._

_You're kidding yourself._

Boots struggle down to a twitch.

_You're more stubborn than this._

_By far._

As blood rushes through his head, his fight appearing to be have come to an end, his equipped materia drops to the bleached powder below, knocked free, glittering as it turns. Burrowing a perfectly round hole in the drift it disappears, warring, crazed voices going with it, severed like a phone line cut.

Begin silence.

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.

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He's wrong about him, by the way. His damsel.

It wouldn't be the first time.

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_"Zack!"_

It takes a long moment, a whole disorderly thought process to finally realize he's falling.

It's another strange moment as he hits the ground, _thud_, like a sack of potatoes, and goes up to his nose in ice pack. The robotic metal arm cloven sheer (deadly vice, elbow joint and all) comes with him and rolls off his chest. He comes to in waves, air (at the last) burning his deprived lungs. His vision is a pin point, the span of a long hallway, black edges squeezing out the sky above.

Cloud's shaking the life out of him then, yelling down into his face from above. There's a contradictory mellow green illuminating the edges of his silhouette. Other than that he looks like hell, plain shagged out, all used up. There's a good bit of fresh crimson running down his cheek below his ruined eye. It's running to his chin and then dripping, _drip, drip_, quick as rain fall onto Zack's tundra jacket. There's hardly any white left on that torn up fabric around his head, hardly any left at all. He's not so pale now himself as grey and blue.

A spectre.

_How long was I out?_

"...detonate, come on, _get up_!"

A loud whistle, like steam escaping a tight space, cuts off the first portion of his statement. Zack drags his legs in and moves to get to his feet, Cloud trying to assist. That No. 8 contraption is a busted and broken, uncoordinated wreck. Missing an arm and several legs it's struggling now. Gears, servos and circuits are visible underneath its less than dapper matte paint job. Zack sees awe inspiring, the stuff wet dreams are made of, spiraling fireworks, crashing cymbals. Cloud's counter, just the thought of it—and he's so small and unassuming.

"It's going to self-destruct!" Cloud reiterates.

Zack staggers at his peak, gone woozy, down right stricken. His vision draws out thin again, his head a mess of white noise and his entire side, up to his spine, to the base of his skull, the back of his eyeballs, flares alive. It's a sharpened, eager stab and Zack's body buckles under it.

This is unfiltered pain.

True and choking as the vice before.

But.

Then he's warm.

Really warm.

And he can smell sea salt.

Can hear the wind crisp and clear in fact, and the whiff of oil, the catastrophe of the machine beeping, its detonation countdown ticker cycling down, and something else entirely... The whisper of a whole new set of voices and words and encouragements, distant but uncanny.

He starts to come back.

"You got a..."

Cloud cuts in, "Yeah, yeah, hurry."

No. 8 attempts still in its attack as beaten and broken as it is. It reaches out its singular feeble arm, heaving itself up and up and falling prostrate. It heaves up and up again. The antenna crowning its deformed torso are bent, broken and useless, that red eye now blind. About as adept as an infant.

Able to stand without falling Zack spends no more time looking. They've got to put as much distance between them and the wreckage and the bugged out machine as possible. Who knows how far and wide the thing's packed to blow. They'll head back to where they thought they had escaped from an hour ago. How could he forget... The dismal snow blasted shelf lining the frozen coast. It'll put the mountain at their backs. No better protection. Thirty meters just won't cut it.

Zack slows as they draw near.

He's losing his wind, his stride wide and wobbling.

He catches his dragging feet and comes to his knees.

The affects of Cloud's restore materia aren't lasting. Either the damn thing's just that useless or Zack's really just that close to... His chest tightens. Bright and glaring, he'd rather not think it, voice it, give it weight over him or even a slipping, invalid's grip. He's just winded. Just shagged out. But Cloud's near frantic, near insanity, near absolution, salvation, completion.

He must have noticed the blood.

_It could be worse._

Zack winces.

New voices, commanding and many, carry over No. 8's determined commotion to die as loudly, as violently, and as closely as possible. Trooper reinforcements. More commonly known as _replacements_ in Zack's click. Drone-like in their nature, just more meat for the sausage machine of war, the newly arrived reinforcements swarm in and surround the machine on all sides.

Moths to a light.

Fire has broken out inside No. 8's belly and steam, smoke, exhaust, shoots up and out from gaping joints like purged waste. The whistling crests, higher and higher still.

A distorted female voice chimes in.

_"T mi— ten sec— detonat—"_

Couldn't have better timing.

"It's gonna blow!"

The troops scatter.

That's about when Cloud hits him with another dose of restore. The rush isn't quite as potent as the first but it gets his blood pumping, his lungs open, and his feet under him. They reach the mountain rift, the escape route, with no more snags. Cloud slides through, sword clanging against rock, fingers clawing, pulling. Zack follows him up going at an angle.

_Five._

His shoulders wedge.

_Four._

His sides scrape.

_Three._

His legs kick.

_Two._

His gloves tear.

_One._

It's the percussion wave that hits him first (eardrums bursting in excruciating immediacy), and the heat comes surely thereafter, like the surface of the Sun. The blast forces him forward, helping in his effort, yes, but he's still too damn big. He's caught, wedged, just a few feet from freedom. Flames lick at his back. It's enough to make him want to yell and scream and plead and he does, loud enough to stagger his voice but not nearly loud enough to beat out the splitting air. He kicks and pulls, fever hot, sweat breaking out over his back and his neck and his legs. His uniform is scorching, burning up, ears ringing and ringing and ringing. Cloud's just ahead on the other side, face urgent, lips moving. He can't hear him but he knows he's saying him name, _Zack, Zack, Zack_, like a cheer.

And then he's free.

The inertia from his final kick and shove takes Cloud with him to the ground as he comes clear.

Flames fire out of the rift, blushing the sky.

Back to silence.

.

.

.

_Status: Infantry Cadet - Mission #01 - Northern Continent_

A pungent, overbearing smell takes the air.

He isn't knocked out by the blast but he is knocked over when Zack comes barreling through the tight passage. Threw him back a few good feet actually, landing him square on his ass. Cloud doesn't move for a couple beats after, ears ringing. He first assesses that nothing is going to attack or explode, etc, etc (the list spins on) and then he allows himself to take a lung full of solid cold air. He blinks. That's something that's been bugging him out ever since he woke up here. Blinking, that is. Every extended wink or blink (or a look up, or a yawn) trips a nerve somewhere in his head and _wham_.

He's managed to stop wincing at least.

He gets to his feet, slowly, balancing with a hand out.

He can't say much about his equilibrium.

The passage is glowing steady like a coal fire, smoke rising beyond the mountain barricade high in the darkened sky, high relief against the neutral clouds. The reinforcements must all be dead. He spots Zack then as he brings his sight line level. He's lying face down, snow peppered. There's just enough moon light to illuminate the ice blanket, and boy, it's everywhere. No need for a torch or a flashlight here, it all glows.

He steps wide as he makes his way over, the snow here piled high, his boots sinking down deep. He's getting a better look as he's nearly there, just a couple steps away. It becomes clear he may not be getting back up. Zack's uniform is burned, blackened, the back of his jacket peeling away. Bare skin shows over his shoulder blades, shiny and red. The smell is muted but not shy. It's his flesh, his hair.

Cloud pulls his lips over his teeth.

Restore won't do much good here.

_Oh, damn._

His mother would have tapped her foot.

He drops down next to him.

Been anxious over the last gleaming sensations of the Elixir himself. He's gotta say his head's throbbing. But it's been throbbing on ever since they began the interception in the warehouse, and throbbing as he deflected the soldier's blade. It throbbed on still as No. 8 burst free of their supposed shelter (had it just been toying with them?) and through still as he chopped free its arm and fought it off.

He's been winding down.

Getting closer to zero hour.

The witching hour.

Just by touching Zack he can feel the residual heat of the machine's grand finale. The explosion and the scorching flames and the noise. He manages to roll him over after a good two tries, spending all of what little energy he has left. On his back, looking to the sky, Zack's in a worse state. Blood has soaked the snow where he was prone and most of his abdomen. It's as red as in the pictures, as red as rose pedals, precious jewels, anything you ever thought as red, even in the half light.

He rushes down with both hands, trying to find the source. Gotta be a bullet wound, has to be. Small but ferocious and pumping out blood like a faucet. He presses both hands down hard an inch from his hipbone, where he figures the damage must be. He's not trained for this. Wasn't told a lick or rumour about medicine or healing or anything like that. He's shooting in the dark.

"Wake up, wake up."

It doesn't carry.

The wind surges on in good humour.

He barely heard it himself.

Ice obscures Zack's face. It's in his eyebrows, over his eyelids, caught in his eyelashes and dusting his pale lips. Cloud reaches a hand out and swipes it away, as gentle as he can. He doesn't realize he's tracked blood from the wound to Zack's forehead and the tip of his nose.

The expression underneath is blank, lax, sterile.

No more smiles.

"Zack, hey, wake up. _Zack?_"

Just a broken record.

_"What's that?"_

Cloud darts his head up.

He's almost certain he didn't hear anything when a figure walks out from distant grey.

He's losing it. Elixir's run out.

His head throbs hard on that, turning his empty stomach as an after thought. He doubles over, holding his guts. The figure comes closer, as casual as a man browsing in a shop. And it is a man. An old man. He's bundled up twice his size in jackets and blankets and various cloth things, face only identifiable by the fall of a thin colourless beard. It rolls long over a ratty blue scarf. His legs are long and narrow, sinking far into the snow pile beneath him. He might as well be hovering.

Cloud's parched throat swelters and heat pulses behind his eyeball (make that plural, make that phantom eyeball).

His fever is wanting to come back.

He's already begun to shake.

Warily, he looks on.

The old man repeats, "What's that?"

"Um, I—ah," Cloud stammers.

He doesn't _appear_ dangerous.

But Cloud can hardly see straight.

"Ah, please, my friend's... he's hurt."

The old man strides closer, eerily level in the drift.

"No wonder. This is a dangerous place."

Cloud can't help but grow tense.

The old man stands across from him, Zack's immediate right.

No more than a foot away.

"And you're wrong, by the way," the old man says.

He bends at his hips, leaning down.

"You're both hurt."

Fade to black.

.

.

.

.


	6. part 6

**tell all**_ by frooit_

part six

_ff7 semi-au - eventual zack/cloud_  
"the good times and the bad."

_._

_._

_._

_.  
_

_Oh, I'm alive._

_Status: Infantry Cadet - Mission #01 - location unknown _

What an uncomfortable realization.

It follows initial relief.

Here's the world again and it's in the shape of a ceiling, the ceiling of a wooden structure, a cabin. As he stares up at it there's reality, there's the modest glow of distant fire light bathing the walls, shadows changing and switching and shuddering long as the flames switch and change and shudder. The heady draft of straw and wood burn and other more complex scents becomes steadily clearer. It's welcoming, mellow, just like home.

Cloud sits up.

There's a cot below him. It's close to the ground, blankets a toss up of sizes and lengths laid over his legs and feet. He looks to his right, out of no particular compulsion, and finds Zack on a much higher cot, heaped higher still with a variety of blankets of his own, his worn boots hanging off the cot's edge.

_Too damn big for that, too._

Despite the weight of the bundle his breathing appears even and steady.

"Awake now?"

The old man.

Cloud looks over.

"Fantastic."

He sits on a stool across the room, the fireplace at his back.

"He's in trouble, that one."

Cloud narrows his eye.

"Excuse me?"

The old man seems to consider this.

He leans forward.

"Your companion. How are you related?"

"He's," Cloud thinks on this.

He doesn't want to mention Shinra.

"A friend."

But forgets about their uniforms.

"He's in trouble," the old man repeats.

"He was hurt badly, um, sir. Can you help him?"

"I try not to get involved."

The old man produces a pipe. He's no longer layered up like he was before and is considerably smaller for it. He's a thin man, about as intimidating as a stump or withered shrub. Cloud watches him, eye squinting. That head throbbing from before has followed him here and it's muscling its way in, just a tickle now, just a minute distraction. Hopefully it keeps at a manageable level.

The old man taps his pipe.

Cloud adds to the sudden noise.

"Will he die?"

The old man coughs.

"That's really up to him."

"How is he?"

"You should rest more."

Cloud's chin dips at that and he yawns (nerve twinge surprisingly dormant).

Producing a pouch now the old man begins to pack his pipe.

"I can't sleep..."

His neck grows weak.

"I really shouldn't."

His head wants to loll.

"We have to..."

A jaw-splitter says otherwise.

It's the smell (sweet and strong) of tobacco that hits him like a fist.

It reminds him so much of Zack.

He buries the next bout, straightening up his back, biting his tongue.

"So you've found what makes you strong."

The old man strikes a match and takes quick puffs from his wooden piece.

_What makes him strong?_

It had been him against the world, well, _machine_. Zack hung lifeless like a lynch victim tethered to a high tree branch, boots swaying, free moving, an ornament. He had no other choice, there came to light no other option, so Cloud had rushed back to him (to _save_ him, what a retrospect), retracing the space he'd covered trying to escape. With all that gained momentum he'd launched himself up and took a slicing shot out at the mechanized weapon. Luck had been on his side, you had to figure, or whatever it is people believe in these days, because it worked. A desperate assault, a last ditch effort (_just turn off and remember your training_) but it had worked. He fell as Zack fell, landing crouched on his two feet. Zack wasn't so lucky... neither was the robot. End flash back.

Smoke swirls far and wide, switching off Cloud's view of the old man's face.

"You're,"—_puff, puff_—"lucky," the old guy says.

He gestures his pipe to Zack, who sleeps on, quiet, not yet part of their world.

"I saw the two of you."

The tobacco exhaust sets a filter between them.

"But you might not have recognized me."

The old man takes a long drag then, leaning back, crossing his thin legs at the the lip of his furry white boots and shaking out the burning down match. His is a smile obscured by the bristles of his colourless beard and the burn off from his pipe (it's there just the same, good and familiar, fatherly like). Cloud stays alert, observant, ever watching. He should be focused and wary while Zack's out. Something could happen, something's bound to.

"He was with you then and here he is with you now."

That grin grows wider, toothy, smoke seeping through the gaps.

"You're special to him."

Cloud balks, chancing a sidelong look to his companion.

"Special?"

The old man stands, smoke wisp trailing.

"Very special."

He walks the few strides from the mantle and his stool to stop over Zack.

Cloud's eye grows large as he follows him.

"He's strong."

The old man turns his head, features easily pensive.

"But you make him weak."

Cloud ignores this on the surface but underneath, inside rather, his pulse has doubled.

"How is he?"

The old man shrugs.

"You don't listen."

Cloud frowns.

"Well, you haven't said a lot."

"I've said more than I had to."

The old man parks his pipe in his slack mouth and peels Zack's piled quilted layers away with both hands, one by one, as if peeling an onion. The last two layers are thin sheets, the full extent, the whole picture, hidden further below. It could be less than Cloud's original dire diagnosis or, as would be their luck, even worse. Blood stain punctuates and breaks up the canvas white fabric (think: apples, lipstick, bull fighting), evident indefinitely around his middle and dying a deeper pomegranate (red brick) where it's clung to his burned flesh.

The old man pulls these two back as well and reveals the body underneath. Cloud is a bystander, unable and unwilling to divert away. The smell that meets his nose is a pleasant, musky, earthy one. Pine needles or tree bark or crushed flower petals. The inside of an ancient apothecary, a green house, the forest floor. He's a highway of twisted bandages, a patch work of twice-wrapped egg shell cloth and rainbow random ribbon, even snatches of string.

His torso would otherwise be bare if it weren't for all the interlaced wrappings, like a quickly put together present. Dark blue trousers cover his lower half. He lay on his belly off the burns, his face turned to the side and a mystery. A solid blood-spotted square compress marks the bullet wound. Moist and pink (think: gum line) what burns are visible are at the back of his neck, the top and juts of his shoulders, and along his sides. They look as if they've done some rapid healing in the time elapsed and they only have to air out and scar over now.

The old man's vague impression stirs anxiety. He resets the layers, says no more and returns to his stool. Setting down his pipe on a nearby chest of drawers he turns to tend to the fire. With his eyes off him Cloud pulls himself up from his cot, throwing the blankets down to his shins. He finds he's not in uniform anymore but instead a clean threadbare shirt and slacks, tan or brown in shade.

It's not easy going but he gets his bare feet to the floor (head thrumming and blood rushing), fuzzy warmth greeting him as animal fur rugs. He pads the short break to where Zack rests, keeping his balance by stretching out each arm. The earthy aroma is more pungent here, filling his perception, cooling some heat, but then, the long, looping and marred mess of bandages are out of view.

"Zack?"

He listens.

Not hopeful.

Well, that's a lie (he's more hopeful than he should be).

He doesn't deserve this, and come to think of it, _he_ doesn't deserve this either but that's not the point. The point is, Zack might be a little brash and brave but that counts for something, doesn't it? They're not dead, he didn't leave him to die or kill him himself, or ever stop smiling. He's a good guy, far from the feral, crazed traitor Sephiroth made him out to be. He'd looked into his eyes and everything, his own impervious and humourless, and told him he wouldn't hesitate to _leave you behind or strand you or use you if it suited a need_. There had been no diversion or cut away as he explained how he would dispatch the troop by blade or his own two hands. Those pronounced words crisp and sharp, prefixed. That hold Sephiroth had, that presence (all around suffocating), Cloud hadn't been able to move, blink, or breathe under it. He'd been dumb struck.

That static stare.

Deep as black forest.

"Cloud..."

Heart thump.

Zack groans and turns his head.

"You're not dead," Cloud blurts.

A single eye (some kind of mockery) spots him.

Bristling black hair grumbles, "Trying to get rid of me?"

"Fabulous," the old man interrupts.

Zack blanches.

"Who are you?"

Cloud looks over.

The old man stands at the foot of the cot.

"A concerned elder."

"What—"

He cuts Zack off (in such a way Cloud's not entirely sure he'd heard him at all), saying: "If you want to know how you ended up here, it wasn't easy. I am not as young as I used to be but I've never left a man stranded. You're in my home. I don't have coordinates, I'm afraid, and this valley had a name once upon a time too but, as I said, I am out of prime and things will be forgotten."

"Are we—"

"Safe here? I should say so."

The old man paces away, clearing his throat, all the while working that pipe.

The cot creaks as Zack flips over (wincing little) and creaks again as he moves to sit upright. He's combing that unruly hair from his brow now. Settling, he looks over to Cloud, and Cloud is, well, it's hard to explain how Cloud is. From what he's seen and heard of Zack and what he's seeing now, eyes even and cool, handsome face open, friendly (regardless or in addition to that new scar)—he has every right to feel what he's feeling, and that's relief. But, it's not just that either, no (not so simple), it's something new and that's the complication. He has no idea what _it_ is.

Cloud looks down and away.

_Special, huh?_

The moment is heavy.

Him on his knees at his bed.

Zack prone.

It could be a damn painting.

His mother would scold him.

Zack lifts an arm and gestures.

"How's your—"

He cuts himself off this time and doesn't finish.

"Oh," Cloud reaches up, still refusing the eye contact.

He hasn't wanted to feel it, solidify it as a fact, but he does now. There's knit material under his fingers, soft as downy bird feather, and under that, pulled taut, is a bandage. He runs his fingers over this, where his eye would (under normal circumstances) be, but all he finds now is a void, a shallow hole outlining the orbit of his eye socket. He pulls his hand back, putting it on the bed cloth.

He contemplates and finally settles with, "Could be worse."

Zack's flash of a half smile, an instant sunrise, it fools him into giving one back.

"What a trip," Zack sighs.

He stretches his spine, vertebrae crackling their relief.

"Man, I could go for a smoke."

He pats where his jacket pockets would be, a frown turning down his face.

"Where are my—?"

There's a moment of dead air then, sweet smoke swirling, poor man's thurification. The old man twitches his head up from where he stands, as if out of sleep. He clears his throat after a slight pause, a comical second, and then he starts a search, rifling through his pockets, slacks and long coat both. He comes up with a dingy silver lighter and a small red and yellow package after a time. Clearing the small room he brings them over to set them in Zack's open hand.

"Don't be afraid to dirty the floor, enough of my own ash down there, won't mind more."

He regresses to his stool, sitting carefully.

"How long have we been here, old man?" Zack inquires, pulling free a cigarette.

"Oh," the old man stokes the fire, mulling the question over.

"It depends."

Zack places the cigarette's filter on his lips and lights the far end.

New smoke breeds.

"Time rolls differently here, so maybe a day, maybe a week."

"What? How does that work?" Cloud interjects.

"Hah, asked myself that before. Don't know to be frank."

Their collective brows crease.

"If you're wanting back home though, I can help."

"How exac—?"

Zack's matter of fact tone is clipped.

"Rest and become well. I'll show you soon."

His metal lighter lid he clicks shut.

His eyes divert to Cloud.

He shrugs.

Well, they have little choice.

"Hungry?" the old man offers.

.

.

.

_Status: Ex-SOLDIER 3rd class - Mission aborted_

He must have done something right.

At least a little bit along the way.

He's not exactly a saint.

Don't get him wrong.

But he's not corrupt either.

And for a kid who couldn't hope to budge him Cloud really kicked some ass.

_Being outshined by a half pint infantry grunt._

He was formerly unacquainted with humility.

Now it warms his skin.

The same old diabolical and frozen death trap is still out there in the unknown as he sees it from a frosted over window. Just as it had been the day before. Unforgiving, blustering, blistering, frozen. The atmosphere out there would be a stinging, painful grate rather than this warm, holistic trance. Although, if he wants to listen to the old man's input at all he can't really be sure it's been one day. From what he said they could have jumped a week from yesterday—or not, come to think of it.

_Man, he's probably bonkers._

_._

_._

_.  
_

They eat soup the old guy prepares in relative silence (to say nothing of the scraping of their spoons at the bottom of an emptying bowl or the odd slurp or belch). The smell of it cooking over the hearth was intoxicating enough to remind Zack of his hearty SOLDIER appetite (and his body as a whole). He felt it entirely essential to ration in a cigarette (or three) to dampen the growl and the general unrest, even as Cloud disapprovingly eyeballed him (literally). It gave him something to do too.

The soup turns out thin and light and disappointingly sans meat but he still downs five bowls, no problem, even with all the green, leafy things floating around in it like refugees.

It tasted better serving after serving.

Cloud, having finished two and a half portions, flops down on his cot.

He yawns as he says, "Could sleep for a week."

"Go ahead," Zack encourages, lighting his after meal cigarette.

"I..."

The kid looks torn.

That almost perfect face in perfect regretful profile.

"Yes, you should. Get all you can when you can, " the old guy throws in.

Zack regards him, openly gauging, reading, but says nothing in turn.

Cloud is (has been, mostly likely) looking at him when he relaxes.

He can't be more than fifteen years-old.

Zack takes a drag.

Because of that innocent face.

That vibrant blue eye.

That bounce back.

He exhales, nice and slow.

That projection.

Disarmingly (beautiful, transfixing, elegant, compelling) young.

"Wake me up in an hour?"

He says it soft and low and just for him.

It's an acid spike to Zack's guts.

He nods, letting the dregs of the exhale go through his nostrils.

.

.

.

_An hour later._

He's on cigarette seven when the old man dissolves his assumed perception of his expiration.

He'd been stationary for so long.

"Zackary is it?"

Zack exhales pointedly.

"It's just Zack."

He must have found his Shinra ID card.

"That's your name, isn't it?" the old man prods.

"For my mother maybe."

Cloud's still out when he throws a look over. He'd dropped off facing away from him, that alarmingly blonde head of his obscured by the knot of his new scarf and the absurd amount of blankets balanced atop. He's cocooned, in larval form, and soon he'll be something else (strange and complicated). The old guy is faced away as well, looking to the fire, leaned over, hunched. Besides that stool of his, this cot and Cloud's, there are no other notable bits of furniture in the cabin. He has shelves and chests (filled or covered with empty jars and rocks and books), sure, but no formal table, no pattern. A kitchen and an exposed water heater take up the far end, a collage of dried flowers hangs above the mantle opposite the only door (presumed the main entrance), a writing desk hibernates to his immediate right, envelopes and sheaves of paper disturbing its dusty surface, and a long bookshelf is to his left, closest to Cloud, lining the wall with the door (no books are on this one just more glass jars, and these are filled with liquids and solids of debatable origins).

"Zackary Fair and Cloud Strife..."

The old guy turns now, the ID cards visible in his mitts.

"I'd rather you gave those back," Zack says, trying for Mr. Nice.

"Why hold on to shreds of an old life?"

Zack pulls in a clot of smoke.

"Still my shreds."

"True."

The old man takes a sighing breath.

"Then think of it as a gift."

And he looks up, face unreadable.

"So this one moment I can remember."

They won't exactly need them, not anymore. And that could be proof too to somebody who might come by, someone associated with Shinra, that if their IDs and uniforms are here, bloodied and fried and torn, they must be dead. The old man must have scrounged what he could and left the remains.

Zack huffs, smoke jetting.

"On one condition."

The old man quirks his head.

"When my buddy wakes up," he jerks a thumb to Cloud, "you tell us how we get home."

_Home_.

_What a gas._

The old man touches his chin, Cloud's ID in his hand staring out.

"Agreed."

The old man chuckles.

"I was going to anyway."

Zack rolls his eyes and flicks his cigarette.

.

.

.

_They don't get up all at once._

Cloud dozes on as Zack sees himself to his feet. The old man chides him from afar, half-heartedly retelling a story of old time plight and pain and suffering as he goes at it. His bones and muscles have gone stiff from disuse and healing and they pull tight underneath his tender skin, causing restless spasms. Enough plight and pain there. He bends out each leg as they reach the edge, stretching out each knee before urging on. The old man, meanwhile, hacks and coughs and mumbles to himself about the proceedings of the story.

Ever so slowly Zack stands, hissing a full blast of air out as he rises, spine cracking and correcting.

At his crest he waits for his head to clear, good, long breaths a constant.

_How miserable._

_What a wreck._

"Good as new," the old man says, sarcasm aplenty.

Zack smiles sharply, sardonically, and regards his new slacks.

Shabby and torn and faded, not unlike his uniform as it is now.

Not unlike his purpose at all anymore.

Shabby, torn and faded out like a dead star.

He makes his way over to Cloud's cot. It's down low so he has to ease back down again too. The going's rough, his injured side protesting the loudest, but he doesn't make a noise or a show of it. He settles on the balls of his feet and reaches out, nudging the kid's narrow shoulders.

The shoulders pull away.

"Cloud, time to get up."

He waits on that.

A smile buds.

He adds, "We're at grandma's house."

Cloud carefully turns over.

His singular eyebrow is raised.

"Hey," Zack greets.

He lets the smile go.

It blooms wonderfully.

Cloud gives no immediate approval or disapproval.

The old man retires any hope of that as he comes up then, arms filled with furs and cloth and string rolling off tiny spools. He swings the load at Zack and Cloud both, a beckoning gesture, and then lets the furs and miscellaneous flow from him arms and to the floor. It's a down pour of fabric, dust and ash displacing into the air, creeping up and out.

"These are for you. I'll hang on to the Shinra swag."

Zack frowns but can't rightly dispute. He wanders over and begins pulling through the heap, Cloud getting up and following quietly behind. They find whatever matches and whatever fits and whatever isn't half-finished or raw material or bundles of loose thread. These surrogate clothes are heavy and padded and fur, enough to choke out the steely bite, the ever present prod of the elements.

Oh, he's gonna want to spend a month on the beach after this one for sure.

Just as he thought he's sorted, trails of bandages hugged close, forgotten, and starts helping Cloud tie up a pair of decidedly feminine knee high, paratrooper style leather boots (the only complete set to fit, to both of their chagrin), the damn old man hands him a bouffant furry thing. A hat. He doesn't react to Zack's begrudging air and doesn't take _no thanks_ for an answer. Zack puts the abomination on, if only to get it out of his hands so he can finish lacing.

Cloud immediately lights up.

"You look like a fur trader or, no, no, a _bear_."

He doesn't stifle his laughter very well.

Zack shrugs but grins, making claws with his fingers and completing the picture with a sneer.

Cloud nearly chokes.

"You're nuts," he professes.

"Like you have room to talk, lady boots."

.

.

.

The Sun has come out at last. It glares down at them from on high, casting its essence along the fresh melting snow, gleaming far and wide, as far as his eyes can see. They're higher up than they were the night before (or weeks, don't forget, shit), Zack's looking down into a flaming bright valley, as dormant and unbroken as a dinner plate. The air is thinner here and the chill itself enough to stop you dead.

He pulls his new jacket tighter, the furred collar brushing his lips, smelling old.

Speaking of old...

"It's over this way, _SOLDIER_, " the old guy calls.

Zack turns.

He then corrects and looks up.

"You have an airship?"

"She's an antique now, just like me."

The ship itself, in all its glory, is larger than the old man's shack and parked right behind it. It's camouflaged under a speckled grey and white canvas. From a distance it must not be perceptible at all.

"Does it still fly?"

"We'll have to find out," the old man answers and chuckles.

"Great," Zack groans.

"Don't trust much, but trust me," says the old man, heading around the shack to the ship.

"This guy's a..."

"I can see someone," Cloud cuts in, subdued.

Never a dull moment.

He's stalk still next to him, facing the valley, face a wonder, a curious thing.

Zack follows his stare.

He has to squint against the glare.

He's right though.

An outline is coming their way, treading up the slope, shimmering in the distance.

No, he notices, it's two huddled together.

"Should we do something?" Cloud asks, looking to him.

He means should they help them.

_What a bleeding heart._

Zack's not so optimistic today.

"Oi!" he calls out.

The two figures halt.

Zack moves Cloud to his flank.

The air pops wild rebounding vibration at this.

Cloud jumps, startled, moving further back.

It's a gun shot, a solid mass in the emptiness.

While one of the figures appears injured the other appears to be holding a long-barreled rifle.

Zack reaches back to pull Cloud down with him as he ducks, but he's retreated several feet out of his reach. As he's looking back to overcompensate, looking dead on him, completely focused, almost there, another shot rings out, c_rack, _and Cloud jerks away. His golden boy twists with the recoil, spinning completely around before landing flat out in the slush.

The report echoes.

Zack stares on wide-eyed.

"Got one!" cries out the rifleman.

The rebound: _Got one, got one, got one..._

Zack's blood sets to boiling. His hairline fracture resolve is an ever-expanding web of cracks fanning out, consuming his harmony. Unarmed he may be, but he dashes off. He's blind but for one thing: the long-barreled rifle and the figure behind it. His stride is full speed, flat out. He's crashing down the incline to catch him during his reload. He's not wishing, no, just keeping the faith, headed straight into the mouth of the beast. Nothing but the hard sought outcome of revenge, that fucker's head on a spike, is going to clean this red from his eye.

He crashes low into the fumbling figure, a body as tall as he, a human with a face, but he doesn't see it. The figure stared him down the entire length of his approach, choosing to reload instead of fleeing, but Zack's gone, snapped, no one's home. The rifle is knocked free (it falls out of sight and is lost) and he plows the figure far over the curve of the slope. The figure goes tumbling head over heels. From his side the injured figure rises now and comes with a retaliation, with vision and clout. He takes the figure's fist, a left hook, but he doesn't take anything else after. He strikes back with a knee to the gut and a left hook of his own. If not causing concussion than dislodging a few teeth as it lands. The figure twists back and sprawls out in mock reverence, much like Cloud had.

_Cloud_.

A burning rises in his chest, scorching heat, intense to the point of religious revelation, urging him forward, forcing his hand. He trudges to retrieve the rifleman prone in the snow, mewling and moaning and trying his very best to crawl away. With that blood still in his eye Zack snatches him by the back of his shirt collar and brings him to his feet.

He trembles.

Whether it's his own or the rifleman's he doesn't care to know.

"Hey, stop!"

A clear shot through the mist.

_Part the sea._

_Clear the heavens._

It's Cloud's voice.

Zack blinks and finds he's staring into a face he knows, mitts bunched in the front of his uniform.

_Troy_.

He releases the boy and he falls free.

Just a cadet.

One of the two unaccounted for in the crash. _The crash_, the white out, the black out, the stars twinkling silver and then black wisp, the burning bright chopper, the dead bodies, Cloud's steaming, smoking body, his cracked and bloody helmet, his lonely blue eye, his pale, pale lips.

"You killed him, you killed him, you asshole!" Troy screams.

The cadet surges up and beats his own two fists against Zack's chest and face. He deflects as he can, stepping back and away. Cloud reaches them now coming down the slope in a graceless slow-motion stumble. Snow's caught in his hair and flecked in his ridiculous fur coat, the old man's blue scarf held fast in his hand, whipping long behind. His naked white bandage borders the fall of his hair. It's tight around his small head. That's enough to stir up that hungry scorch again but Zack quells it, sets it aside, because _he's not dead, thank you, thank you, ow._

Troy socks him in the hip, aggravating his wound.

He relents now and sees to his friend.

Cloud has the gall then to ask, "Are you okay?"

Zack has more important things to see to. He pulls Cloud close, not saying a quip or a clever remark back, or even worrying about this Troy newcomer. He throws open the kid's long coat, reaches inside, turns him from this side to that side, palms skating closer, closer, feeling his shape, leeching heat. Over his hips and his stomach he goes, across his breast bone and his dragon spine. Cloud protests and struggles but Zack holds on tight, needing to know.

"Stop, geez! I'm fine."

He finds nothing.

Cloud's unharmed, warm, solid.

"It just winged me, is all. Saw it coming," Cloud says.

That distrusting look has been resurrected.

He's frowning now.

"And you go off like a mad man."

He bites his lip after he says it.

Zack compresses his teeth.

"I didn't have a choice."

"What does that mean?"

Zack balls his fists.

"He's dead!" Troy screams.

The wail echoes for days.

_Dead, dead, dead._

Zack closes his eyes for a moment.

"He's dead, you mon—"

And punches Troy out.

Cloud flinches.

Zack composes and admits, "It was my only option."

.

.

.

.


	7. part 7

**tell all**_ by frooit_

part seven

_ff7 semi-au - eventual zack/cloud_  
"the good times and the bad."

_._

_._

_._

_._

"Your only option?"

_Status: Ex-SOLDIER 3rd class - Mission aborted_

It's just like when he was being scolded by his mother. That same kind of zing or sudden pang that nobody, _really, so stop trying_, could bring out like she could. Very much the same shade of shame and surprise and hurt manufactured a lifetime ago, already threaded through with the lies and mind games of Shinra and just as striking and unyielding as in its genesis. The pounding head left over from rushing blood and rushing fists just adds to the sour cocktail**. **It's enough to make a guy second-guess his actions and goals and get that same terrible tingling in his bowels.

_Oh, just like old times._

He's not showing a lick of it, mind you, but then he's not a looking glass like he was when his mother held sway (or even like he was a year ago). He's stiffened up since then, been tangled good and proper in his (former) shining aspirations and (former) training. And if you wanted to know, he's having a hard time of shedding those attributes down to the core, to his splintering shell. What is he... if he isn't SOLDIER? If there could be any consolation in this moment, just a tickle, anything to ease the stress, at least he doesn't have to stand and take it like he did as a child. He's free to dispute or bail.

Cloud is fuming, ready to blow, his face full on red (a touch from the chill, a touch from the trek, a touch from his inner soul). It's only the second bout of colour Zack's seen there since their first real meeting (it was nothing but blanched skin and cut lips then). These are polar opposites, a complete turn around. He moves away from it nonetheless (away from the new development), and leaves the traces of his half-thought decision and Cloud's gaping mouth right where they are. Cloud's opinion of him is important (high on that list), absolutely, but their survival trumps all. _Number one, number one!_

That's it. He's decided. He's going to get that old coot, they're going to get in that airship; they're going to go home (even if he's still confused about the whole "home" situation). No more bullshit or surprises or sudden attacks or near death experiences, just straight and true, tried and true.

"—_hey_, Zack."

"I'd suggest in the future that you stay closer to me."

"Okay, sure," Cloud agrees, carefully.

Zack looks back over his shoulder.

Cloud's fidgeting, deflated, finding sudden interest in his scarf.

"That wasn't the greatest move on my part, I know," Cloud adds.

"Yeah, ya had me going for a minute there."

He remains enchanted with his head gear and Zack a wall, nothing but his back on display. Cue an awkward stretch of time. The wind shrills and breathes breathy sharp and the early sunlight gleams strong behind Cloud. It comes over his shoulder (like a twin) and highlights through his short hair. The brilliant backlight of God's light bulb burns the image in so Zack can not forget (his silhouette, his wire-thin self), even as he glances as he does from the corner of his eye, from the aloof corner of his shoulder. Up the incline the sputter of an engine trying to turn over comes.

Zack adds a step to his retreat.

"Let's go."

But he doesn't hurry to take up the offer.

"We can't just leave them here," he says.

Troy sprawls at his feet, the other in agreement and sprawling out before Zack.

"They'll freeze. We should..."

He looks up the slope and then back. Concern renews the fading blush.

He's unlike so much of what Zack knows (become used to, been conditioned to). He's not like _him_ at all, not in the least. These are different eyes, different statures, builds, morals, projections, and... well, there's a same complexion sure, and that damn SOLDIER connection... but that's a stretch, that's accounting for chance and attendance. He's as far from that nut job as you could get without overlapping and coming right back around to where you differed in the first place.

Dark side light.

"You can't let their own fear condemn them."

This kid, pure and clean and true, not yet touched on by the gloomier things of the underground drudgery and dark—that's Cloud. Who stands for Justice when Justice is dead and buried and walked over like the forgotten cemeteries of an obsolete era? Some still do, some still fight, and Zack thought for the longest time that he was one of them. It turns out he'd been wrong. What a buzz kill. But this kid does, doesn't he? This small thing. He fights. And he does so tooth and nail, like the last of a dying kind. So that's something. Even if Zack's, meanwhile, being torn to shreds, to ribbons, conflicted and opposed... Even if it gets the best of him and drives him down, there Cloud is, gritting his teeth, clenching his fists, ready to show him how the hero stuff really goes.

He'd been wrong about him.

It's no wonder, no big shocker that Zack's been slowing his pace. There's evidence of all this (as clear as the shrug of his shoulders and the tension in his guts). He isn't sure witch direction to choose, not anymore, but he is certain that whichever one he ends up with will lead him down a path stopped at the foot of a gravestone. The name etched into that stone is anyone's guess. But maybe, just maybe, it will lead him, _them_, to the brink of satisfaction. It's that promise that has him by the balls.

Oh, the flickering reprieve. The hopes that everything will turn out in the end.

_Don't panic._

It's just too potent not to entertain. It sounds like destiny or fate in his movie reel (his fictional story), but, it's probably more like desperation, or insanity, or, of all the ugly things, _fear_. He hasn't failed much in his life. Although, he's never really cared to take a look back and check the damage. Too damn busy grinning and joking and rushing ahead, beating 'em to the punch.

He joined Shinra to fight in the war after all, not himself.

"So what do you suggest?"

"Leave them with the old man."

"I don't want to bargain with that weirdo."

Zack bristles.

"You won't have to," Cloud affirms, voice devoid of inflection. "I will."

Zack relaxes little.

"He likes you better anyway."

That one visible eyebrow creases, twitching toward a frown. They're both grasping at straws, role playing, just trying to get back to something they know (a place where things aren't quite so tits up and their troubles seem much more manageable). Until then... Zack takes the two cadets, one on each shoulder, and strikes up the slope.

This is a real burden. These cadets. This situation. He can't help but make the association, sorry. It's about reflection, soul searching, inner peace. Life's a lesson, sure, but this is ridiculous. He's got the weight of his love (because that's what it is, son, no hidin' that) of Cloud on one hand, and his worry for his parents and utter disdain (_revenge, vendetta_) for Shinra and friends on the other.

Each as heavy as the other but one more than all.

Cloud trails at his side, following him on the way back to the old guy's place and maybe even to some kind of solution to this falling out. He's close enough that Zack can hear his breathing. He's so close, in fact, that he can feel his radiant heat. That's some old comfort. That's familiar already.

Zack's side begins to ache. Each step is well placed but slow.

That sputtering engine is barking now, becoming a vibrant hum now.

He smiles at that (while he still can).

At the crest of the snowy hill, right where it levels out and becomes the pathway to the old coot's front door, his furry hat sits. They watched the two figures approaching from there. The damn thing flew off as he hauled ass down to intercept them. Right after the second shot.

Right after tragedy struck.

A far burst of black smudges in the sky (probably from when the airship coughed to life). It's a mark on the smooth ease of expanse. It's lonely. Picturesque. Cloud picks up the hat as they pass, turning it over and bundling his scarf inside. He puts this combined unit under his arm.

It's, "Wait here," and then he goes around the side of the shack.

Zack does.

As he waits he thinks.

As he thinks he looks left to right and then turns to see behind.

_Where do we go now? What is the appropriate response?_

As he turns behind he finds everything clear.

_Besides falling on old habits._

Cloud and the old guy emerge.

They're in conversation.

"I see," the old coot's saying. He's just a hair taller than Zack but Cloud's infantile next to him.

Zack readjusts the limp cadet on his right. His thoughts scatter in a wince. A pinch smarts his side and an itch flares up his back. The old guy holds the door to his shack open, waving for them to come in. Cloud enters first, Zack moving to follow. He has to ease one cadet down and leave him at the threshold in order to fit inside.

The cadets are deposited, one each to a cot.

The old guy stands at the middle of the room now, the fireplace off to his left. He holds a satchel, a rifle and a string of bullet shells. The firelight adds a level of warmth to the scene turning his otherwise colourless beard a merry orange, his otherwise black eyes a glimmering yellow, his otherwise washed out and dull demeanor a lively veil. He smiles.

Zack doesn't.

_There's something about this guy..._

"These are yours, as well," he says.

He hands the rifle and the strand to Cloud.

The satchel he offloads on Zack.

Cloud checks the rifle and shoulders it.

It's a beauty of a thing: blue steel, oaken-stalked, pump action.

"Can't use the rifle anymore and that," the old guy says, shaking the satchel in Zack's hands, "possessions I found on you and some extras too. Clean bandages and rations and whatever I thought you might need. It'll get you as far as Shinra if you're as spry as I was in my younger years..."

He quiets, a solemn look disrupting. "But, I think you've proved that."

Cloud reaches out his hand and says, "Thanks again."

The old coot takes that hand in his dried out one, the other he puts over them both.

He shakes Cloud's enveloped hand heartily.

Zack shoulders the satchel and looks away.

It's pushing dusk when they step outside again.

Zack and Cloud both have a moment (a quizzical shared look) but let it pass. The old man strides ahead, that gait of his longer than a field of daises. As he goes he's saying, "No time to lose. Come on, come on. There are procedures and preparations and flips to flip and fires to stoke and tobacco to smoke. We don't want to lose the sunlight, now do we? Or do we?"

Zack keeps eyes on the sky, following the two but at a lagging pace.

_He was right._

New snowfall has covered their tracks and all evidence of the tussle.

Time is far from linear in this place.

That helps him understand little.

His furry sleeve is tugged and his attention reclaimed.

"Are you coming?" Cloud asks.

.

.

.

The airship is rather generic and plain in its construction and much like a traditional sea boat. The few major differences are four propellers at four opposite corners atop four wooden stilts. These rise above a canvas and wooden frame at the ship's middle. This canvas billows and furls, filled with hot air heated by a flame, fed by coal, or wood chips, or maybe even gasoline (he really doesn't know at this point). This air bag, this single lung, it's strapped by rope and line to the ship's guts that hang below. Two more propellers face out at the ship's rear end, along with a little rudder and a modest tethered anchor.

It isn't much to look at but it is their ticket home.

He can't deny he's feeling a keen sense of attachment. That living and turning, geared-up hum. That thudding and beating mechanical heart. He's never piloted one before, or, well—to be more specific, he's never piloted anything before (he doesn't even drive). That's because he's not a pilot, he's a rough 'em up SOLDIER boy. He has every confidence that he can though. He's played plenty of video games and spent plenty of daydreams cooling down shirtless, staring up at Gongaga's unlimited sky and wondering, wondering, wondering, what would it be like. _What would it be like to fly?_ There's no reset button or jarring realization here though, and damn if he'd only had one of those six weeks ago...

They make it up the lengthy rope ladder and inside. The ship's innards are all one open unit. No below deck or engine room, it's all right there, loud and proud and fuming. The smell reminds Zack of his bad habit, his nagging friend, and he grows irritated as the old guy continues to take them on a tour.

"This is your furnace," he yells, trying to top the engine noise. "Your lungs, muscle, and heart, as it were. This needs a constant feed of coal about as often as she wants to keep 'er airborne." He bleats, "The meter here," and points to a red, glass-faced gauge, "this tells you how hot she is. Don't go over this little bar here. See it?"

He taps the gauge.

The _tink tink_ is hardly audible.

Cloud nods.

"There is another one up at the helm. This one is reliable."

He winks.

Cloud nods again.

"That is where you will find your only worry. I'd bet my life on this machine. Other than that, this gal used to ship booze and other things to many different places across many different continents in my time. The wide open floors you see were never empty in those days. Always moving something or someone... Always busy." He fades at the end, running out of breath, "It'll get you across the sea."

They step closer to the helm and away from the ship's rowdy guts.

"She's as simple as they come."

"Is there anything else we need to know?" Cloud asks.

Zack listens, arms crossed over his chest.

The old guy turns to face them both.

"Stay safe."

And then he leaves.

.

.

.

"Was that it?" Zack scoffs.

He watches as the old guy makes his way down the rope ladder.

"I guess," Cloud affirms.

He's gone in moments.

"Where were the _preparations_ and _procedures_?"

"I don't know... He did say they're still looking for us. That we had to hurry."

"Of course they are," Zack says, deadpan.

_No shit._

He can feel the tug and the pull. The weight growing.

The dread.

They won't stop until they're sure they're dead.

"He doesn't want that Shinra bullshit coming down on his head."

"He was one of them," Cloud says.

Zack feels that out.

"He was a pilot. A long time ago."

Figures. That's probably why he didn't like him.

The ship begins to creak then. They get the sensations of swaying, of moving free.

"What's that?"

Cloud leans and corrects, off balance.

Zack moves to see out the wide refracted windscreen.

"He's cut the anchors free," he says.

He claps his hands together once.

"Let's get this show on the road."

.

.

.

With the heat of the furnace at their backs they no longer need the old coot's surrogate tundra clothing. He removes his heavy long coat and tosses it on the low bench that is the passenger seating area located by the main door. It's busy already with the satchel and his sword and Cloud's rifle. They're covered completely as Cloud tosses his coat in to keep company.

What does absolutely nothing for Zack is how frighteningly breakable Cloud appears in nothing but his loose cloth shirt and slacks. He swallows thickly and takes a seat. The ship ascends, lift going at a senile pace. He sits himself in the rubbed-raw caramel leather of the pilot's chair and lights a cigarette.

Time to get some of that nicotine and smoke going.

Time to puff all his cares away.

Time for his time, at last.

A good view of the land spreads long in the windscreen and he watches it coolly. The upper atmosphere is peacefully clear, orange and red and cherry blossom. His ears pop as they climb higher, steaming above the old coot's shack and the mountains into the wide, welcoming magenta and tangerine painted sky. That popping crackle in his ears, that pressure release, it's not an unused to occurrence. He probably would have missed it given any other occasion. But, this circumstance is special.

Such have been all his days since meeting Cloud.

Cloud. He sits next to him in the co-pilot's chair.

He flinches forward now and shoots his hand to his face, covering his nose.

The cool mood instantly changes.

He cups his nose in such a away, such a gentle, trembling way that Zack's full attention is challenged. Cloud lets out a groan then and sinks back in his chair. Let's say Zack is startled. Red starts to creep its way between Cloud's naked fingers and slide its way down the back of his hand and over his bony knuckles, his bony wrist. It's hyper real, surreal, and just a nosebleed. Let's say Zack reacts strongly.

He drops his cigarette and turns from the tie-dye horizon. He lets the ship do its own thing and abandons the helm. It's not like there's an autopilot. It's also not like there's something out there in the darkening vault and the thinned out clouds to be concerned about hitting. The damn thing only goes in one direction, and that's straight on.

He stays seated but reaches out to grab Cloud's hand.

He moves it away.

"Let me see," he says.

Cloud grimaces, sneers, pulls back. Red streams run over his lips and his chin. It's gotten in his mouth, outlined the spaces of his teeth, bringing them out in skeletal relief. He's swallowed most of it already, he can tell. The scent of blood is rousing the air regardless, like dirt and metal chips, mixed in with the already heady exhaust from the airship's single omni-organ. It's complicating his breathing. Every new breath he takes goes straight through his mouth.

"Look up, tilt your head back."

Cloud closes his eye and does so. Zack gets up now to lean closer, to assist and assess. He smudges the red from his lips quickly, rubbing it off his chin and his long throat. It only smears and stains. He shouldn't be feeling like he's taking advantage of a fifteen year-old. It's not so easy when his ungloved hands smooth along warmed, delicate skin and his fingertips itch and itch, wanting so badly to trace visited lips again. Not so easy at all when his face is angled the way it is, turned up to him and receptive as a new flower. And further more, he's blind, unaware, every exhale going moist into Zack's face.

He smears the latest run of crimson from his lips.

Cloud tenses even before he leans in.

Even before their lips press.

Warm.

Soft.

Wet.

And then not.

Cloud jerks back.

His stare is an ocean eclipse.

His overall expression priceless.

(Notes of a Shinra shin-dig past.)

(Hints of awe.)

Zack licks his lips and _there_, he tastes him, his signature.

"Can you..."

Cloud moves the back of his hand to his nose again, stalling the leak.

"Oh, shit. _Yeah_, yeah."

Zack jumps up. It takes him longer than desired to find the satchel hidden under their coats. He curses silently, incessantly, but he does locate it. From it he pulls a loose roll of gauze. Cloud mumbles his thanks and presses it under his nose when he returns. Red eats up the impassive tan on contact.

"Keep your head back."

Cloud complies, sealing his eye and resting his head on his chair back.

Zack hangs the satchel on his own chair back and returns to the helm.

He adds no new narrative.

The engine respires loudly.

.

.

.

The noises of one of the either of them shifting to readjust, the temperamental chugging away of the airship's antiquated engine, and Zack's irritating coughing, as he is want to do, are all that highlight their flight. It's a constant theme song. It hasn't been altogether silent.

Call it unproductive.

Zack regards his last cigarette.

The lucky (how ironic, given it's from a dead boy's pack).

It's upturned, tobacco end first.

He shakes the pack, contemplating, watching it jig alone.

He should save it.

"He was right about you," Cloud says, out of no compunction or cue.

It comes muffled from underneath the ball of gauze.

"Who was?" Zack asks, taking the bait.

He's leaned snug in his pilot's chair, boots kicked up on the console.

"The old man."

"How so? What did he say?"

Cloud remains as he is, head back, gauze steady.

The sky out the windscreen is midnight blue, near black.

Zack draws the lucky and torches it.

His lighter clicks solidly shut but is muted by engine noise.

_Why the hell not. You only live once, and even then it's for such a short window._

_Shorter than a blink._

"Is that so?" he says, exuding a storm cloud of smoke.

Cloud chooses silence.

"Well, I _never_," Zack prods.

This new jet of smoke crawls over Cloud.

"Yeah," Cloud says, his version of snide rearing.

He's not doing it to be hateful or cruel, he's doing it to play Zack's little game.

He waves at the haze, otherwise unmoving.

"He said I'm special."

But this isn't part of his game.

A sheen of sweat makes itself comfortable at the base of Zack's spine.

It stings his raw, pre-burned skin.

"Special to you."

Cloud is looking at him now.

Square in the face.

Zack takes a long drag.

_What a twist._

And shrugs.

"I thought that was obvious," he answers.

He stays cool.

If only Cloud could hear his heartbeat.

"Cut it out," Cloud snaps.

Zack really has to look at him now. He's lifted his head and lowered the gauze, the bulk of it a wet, red mass in his entirely too (inadequate) hands. The bleeding's stopped but he's been left stained from nose to chin and lower still. It makes him look formidable, like he wouldn't stop at anything, like his resolve is stronger than the bones of the Earth, like he draws his strength from that very face paint gore.

From a violent catalyst.

But, it also makes him look frail.

"What do you want with me?"

Zack reels.

"What do I _want with you_? You make it sound so insidious. Like, I'm... _stealing_ you away. Like... you're a prisoner or something. I know we don't have a history but damn, you're kidding me."

"That's not what I meant. What I _meant is_... why do you..."

Zack ashes, casually, giving him time.

"Why do you..."

Cloud's red-faced (entirely removed from his nosebleed).

"...Why do you trouble yourself with me?"

Zack smirks.

It's slow and crawling.

It has an appealing affect on Cloud.

His jaw and fingers clench.

"Well..."

Zack gives the moment room to swell.

"I'm not, you know, gay, or anything."

"Me neither," Cloud throws in.

"I just... You make this really awkward. Shit."

"Sorry."

"Well, no, don't be. Not just anyone gets me lost for words."

He buffers the smirk, making it playful, harmless.

"Hell, you still don't, see. But you _are_ better than most."

"You're getting off the subject."

"And you're persistent."

Zack blows a new puff across the console.

It meets the windscreen and spreads.

"Okay. You're not just special," he starts, face losing most of its joy and edging somewhere into very serious territory. A place he doesn't often visit (but more and more recently). A place he'd rather forget exists. "You're important. And. I get the feeling you're also not at all who you seem."

"Maybe I am." Cloud tilts his head. "Or maybe I'm just scared shitless."

"Why? You've got me for company."

"As comforting as that is..."

"I'm just kidding," Zack warns.

Cloud smiles and leans his head back.

"I know."

The older he gets the more Zack realizes just how compromised his life has become.

Cigarettes, exercise, dietary supplements, work, money, the pecking order, and, ugh, _love_.

He'll never be as free and without worry as he was when he was a teenager.

Longevity complicates everything.

"I'm just-"

It's no use.

Cloud doesn't finish.

The moment is a big deal. He might not have something clear cut to show for it at the end but Zack has admitted something he would have held on to otherwise (all the way to his somewhat untimely death, he can bet). It was an earlier conversation concluded, right before the sputtering stop and the heavy silence. Cloud doesn't seem to need much more than that.

The leather of his co-pilot's chair crackles, moving with his movement, cradling and supple. Zack can relate. Can sympathize with that chair. How he wants to hold on, to support, to comfort, to. He's not afraid of losing. Or maybe he is. He always forgets what side he stands on. When things are so shady and hard to see... You're working backwards all the time.

"So where are we going?" Cloud asks.

"East."

"Midgar? Is that really a good idea? I mean, what the hell do you plan on doing?"

"I dunno."

Zack looks to the darkness.

"I'll decide when we get there."

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	8. part 8

_**tell all**__ by frooit_

part eight

_ff7 semi-au - eventual zack/cloud_  
"some good times shine through."

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_Status: Ex-SOLDIER 3rd class - Airborne_

"Can I ask you something?"

Doesn't that usually end badly? Doesn't everything after that statement go terribly, terribly wrong? Zack's positive that's how this works. Maybe it was gleaned from many previous encounters, sure, but he's also not an idiot. Well, completely. A complete idiot. And things had been going so well.

It'd had been nice to hear a voice. A friendly voice at that, not just poison slung from someone trying to kill you. You've got to enjoy the little things, of course. Like for example: two arms, two legs, both eyes_ (_he feels a little bad for that one) and some honest to goodness peace.

"Yeah, sure. What's on your mind?"

"Well, everything."

Zack's already wanting for another smoke. After all, he hadn't gotten to finish his lucky. When he became aware of it still smoking on the deck he'd had to stamp it out. That makes even a reburn out of the question. He'll have to wait until later, maybe even Midgar, to track some down. They're not the easiest things to find nowadays.

"How long were the cadets out there do you think? In the snow. And why is General Sephiroth trying to kill you? What happened?"

"That... is a lot 'ah questions..."

Zack rocks back in his chair.

"I don't know how long the cadets were out there. Who cares. They're safe, we're safe. The old guy can have some new friends."

"He was nice enough."

"Sure, for a walking antique."

"What about Sephiroth?"

"That's a short story. It goes from naive, to fantastic, to crazy, to scary, to even _scarier _in two seconds flat. He's not exactly... stable, y'know. He's crazy. Like-"

"He can't be _crazy_."

Cloud sounds incredulous.

"Interrupting me and everything. You're certainly talkative."

"I'm sorry. It just sounds..."

"Yeah. Well, I don't blame you."

Zack looks up, thoughtful, reflective even.

"He used to be a good guy."

"What did he do to you?"

Cloud doesn't know what he's asked.

_Terminated. Get this. Term-ih-nated._

"He threatened to kill my family."

Cloud's eyebrow shoots up.

"I'm sorry."

"You say that a lot. It because you're a little guy?"

He smiles. Hasn't he been doing that a lot, too? That's another good sign. A sign out of a sea of worry. A goodness for so much badness.

"I might be a little guy..."

"Yeah, but speak softly and carry a big stick, huh? How's your faucet?"

Cloud takes two breaths in and out, testing the air passage. It's a stuffed up production but that's better than the heaps of viscid gooey redness from earlier. You can count on that.

"Better."

"How about your head?"

"How about _you_? You were the one burned to a crisp."

"Eh." Zack shrugs. "I'm fine."

"I forget you're in SOLDIER."

Zack's fingers, the very tips, and his ruined back, itch.

"Well, I was."

Cloud clenches his jaw.

"Sorry."

"Stop being _sorry_. If you have to, just apologize," Zack suggests.

Cloud withdraws. He pulls right back into himself. Maybe he's heard all of this before. He probably has, and it was probably from his father. That's a good guess, a good start. Zack eyeballs him for a good whole minute. Has been. And it isn't a look just for himself, for his own uses and needs. They haven't been for a while now. He's concerned. This one is digging. He's noting how Cloud's holding himself. How he doesn't mask his messy emotions (they jump and twist on what's left of his small, soft face).

No, not his father then. It had to be his mother. Mamma's boy. Sweet and kind, but not entirely, because he clearly has a bone to pick, and something to prove. That's for sure.

"So, that's two questions down..."

"The old guy told me a few things."

"Not him again."

Zack rolls his eyes and preens his hair.

What he wouldn't do for a cigarette.

"Well. He told me things about Shinra, and about the President, and about you. Not in great detail. He was really very vague."

"I bet he was."

Zack appears disinterested.

That is probably what changes the subject.

"Can you do me a favour?"

Zack leans forward (_don't get too excited now_).

He drops his booted feet to the floor.

"What's up?"

"Do you think you can re-do these? They got wet."

His hand is on the crown of his head, fingers on frayed bandage. He hasn't had his fancy scarf on since it pulled free.

Zack answers with a _can do._

_._

_._

_._

_Status: Infantry Cadet - Airborne_

It might be a contrived thought, but he's damaged goods. It's the reruns that do the most damage, isn't it? The simple thoughts. Simple frets and worries. Those can tear you down the quickest, like a rabid dog, like a rabid fire, like regret and sorrow mixed and glued. Like everything he knows so well. Zack is going to see what he hasn't been able to, and that's a punch to his already restricted ego enough. He'll see what he's missing. Not that he hasn't already, but still, it'll be plain as day and probably a terrible and ugly sight. Just an empty hole. A facsimile. A real bad joke.

"Come 'ere."

Zack had left the satchel close by, he doesn't have to get up. Cloud is still in the co-pilot's chair. He watches him pull some medical supplies out and then switches to the windscreen. It's dark out there, empty, forever. Pinpoints of lights show way below. They must be coastal settlements or ships. It's all giving some contrast and distance. It might as well be an image or a back drop, a television screen. He feels filled up with it. The edges of nothingness lopsided, as he only has the one eye to look through.

"Sit."

Zack denotes his lap.

Cloud hesitates.

"Yeah, I bite, but not that hard."

Now Cloud snorts (almost, just about, because his nose is still stuffed). He goes to sit and comes to rest on the very border of Zack's knee, so as not to intrude, or to intrude as little as possible. With both of them in the chair it sags down low and back, creaking despairingly. Zack doesn't hide his mellow and easy smile as he begins unwinding the bandages, gesturing out wide, tracing out a halo to unloop them.

Bandages.

Cloud thinks plural but it's really just one long ribbon wrapped and wrapped around and then tucked into itself at whatever point to keep it secure. Zack goes against this previous wrapping, the loosening relief bringing on a creeping bear naked sensation in Cloud. The knee under him bounces and the voice attached to it tells him: "Turn."

He's a little sick then. Nauseous.

His guts are a fifty pound weight.

Just heavy.

Zack keeps his knee jumping.

"Turn, turn, turn."

Cloud finally does.

"Jesus," Zack exclaims.

But his face isn't giving him disgust. It is giving him something just as familiar though. Just as unkind. Just as painful and harming.

"Lookin' great," Zack tries.

It's pity.

Cloud says nothing. Zack's bouncing his knee hard. Cloud wobbles, steadying himself on the console.

"I still like you."

"That's comforting," Cloud grumbles.

"Cheer up."

"Why?"

"Because you're bringin' me down, and we can't both drag ass."

He brings up the fresh gauze from the satchel.

"We take turns then."

"What, dragging ass?" Cloud asks.

"Yeah."

Zack pulls the new bandage taut in his hands as he leans over. He starts at Cloud's left socket, over his forehead, under his ear and begins layering it up. He doesn't ask him to turn this time, he just bounces his knee. Cloud reacts and moves his head only, allowing Zack to bring the bandage around and around, slowly and carefully and not too tight.

He ties the bandage off when done, leaving the excess to dangle. The long portion hangs over Cloud's back. He can feel it, like a fashionable headband, like something cool and outside the restraints of his normal hum drum history. He can't help but bring a hand up to test it.

_Cool_.

Zack says, "I go first."

"How come you get to go first?"

"I'm older. And I'm out of smokes."

"That just means you'll go senile before me. Or die."

"No, that means I go first."

Cloud shrugs. He's looking at him now, right at his face, just inches away. He sees as the change comes over Zack's features. A visible shadow. A visible _invisible_ shadow. However that works. But it does, and there it is, and Cloud doesn't like it. Not even a little bit. It's pulling down the corners of his mouth and weighing his brow and obscuringthe wonderful light in his genuine eyes. It's actually giving him a headache.

"I have to go see my parents."

"Is that safe?"

"At this point, I don't care."

"That sounds dangerous."

Zack appears to muse on that, throat working.

"I know, but."

Cloud finishes for him.

"You need to know they're okay."

They sit for a moment. Cloud speaks up first.

"Well, I guess we can do that."

"We?" Zack asks.

"What?"

Cloud straightens up.

That knee jars again, tossing him off balance.

"You're a target, too," Zack reminds. "They'll be looking for us both. Everywhere. And it _is_ a stupid idea. They'll look for us at our homes for sure, but, I have to know. I have to. You have family, right?"

"No."

Zack is probably going to save an inquiry into that for later.

"What did the old guy say about Shinra?"

"That they're distracted. Something's happening in Midgar."

"Like what?"

"He didn't say."

"And how does he know all this?"

"He had a cell phone, and an informer."

His phone's no longer in an easy to reach place on his person. It's probably in the satchel. He reaches for it again, pulling it from the back of his chair and onto his lap, where Cloud isn't (he's much further down). He locates the phone but stops just before flipping it open, his thumb poised above the dial pad. His eyes are trained on the open satchel. There's something else in there immediately more important.

"Bullshit," he whispers.

There's a cellophane sealed pack of cigarettes in his hand when Cloud looks.

"And you said you didn't like him."

"I just said he was creepy. Am I wrong?"

"...No."

"There you go."

He smacks the top end of his newly found goodie into his palm, twice, packing the tobacco inside, and then proceeds to tear the plastic packaging away, his mobile phone forgotten. He first designates what he calls the "lucky", turning a cigarette upside down, and then draws another. His blue slacks, unlike Cloud's, have pockets to use. He retrieves his lighter from one of them and torches the tobacco delight. His lips, even as they pinch the thing tight, find a way to smile. It's good and goofy. It levels Cloud's mild headache.

Zack blows out a great front of smoke.

"What did he do to you? Sephiroth."

"There are words for it. None of them are nice to say or fun to read."

After a drag, Zack adds, "How did your parents die?"

Cloud reels.

_Ouch_.

_When the old man said special, he meant mentally soft, didn't he?_

Zack isn't getting mad though, he's deflecting.

Even so.

"In a fire."

Cloud surprises himself.

"Damn," Zack says.

He drops back into his chair, taking a puff, Cloud swaying from the movement.

"Do you think there's someone for everyone?"

He's not ready for that question, Cloud can see it (if he can see anything).

"Well..."

His smoke curls and folds.

"Yeah. I kinda guess I do."

"I never used to," Cloud says.

And that opens a well, unplugs a dam.

He's telling him much more after that.

"My mother never had any luck. In fact, I'm proof of it, I guess. She never found that someone, or that someone never found her. All she got out of life was me. She told me that... but not in a bad way, you know. She just wanted to let me know-so maybe I could do things differently."

"What happened then?" Zack waves his hand around at the air, trying to grasp for the right words maybe (but, finally realizing there weren't any). "With the fire."

"I told her I wanted to join Shinra. She said I was just like my father."

Zack winces.

"That I just wanted to leave. I told her no, they just paid well. I had the application form in my pocket. It came in the mail that day. I showed it to her. She didn't want anything to do with it."

Zack lets him go on. He's nursing that cigarette for all it's worth, his stare pointed beyond him and to the ink spot of a sky outside. They're slow and deliberate inhales. The cherry burns close to his face, lighting his unseeing eyes from underneath. It's a strange glow.

"I left. I was so upset. I left."

Cloud takes a small breath.

"When I came back the village was in flames. And my mother with it. I didn't have anywhere else to go. The application was still in my pocket, so... here I am. I never used to believe in fate. I still think bad things happen to good people. There is no damn karma. It's only shit."

Zack drops his cigarette to the deck, crushing it under his size ten boot with the leg Cloud isn't perched on. The deck's finish is wooden but it's not in pristine condition. It's blackened and scuffed from so much foot traffic and so many cigarettes before.

"I'm sorry to hear that. All of it," he says now. "I do believe in karma though. I'm still paying for my mistakes. I'm guessing you never found out who started the fire?"

"No."

Zack breathes heavily.

"Alright, get off. You're putting my leg to sleep sitting like that."

Cloud scoots off and goes back to his chair.

He sits there while Zack puts his lighter back in his pocket, the satchel back where he got it from, and relocates his phone. It gives him enough time to muster up what he feels the need to add.

"Thank you."

"For what?"

"For being you."

"I try."

Zack grins.

And then flips open his phone.

A few moments later Zack barks loudly.

"That's why. They're having a memorial service."

"What?"

"Shinra is having a memorial service in Midgar. For me."

"You're kidding."

"I'm not. It says it here on their fucking website."

He hands the phone over.

He's not wrong.

It reads: _"Shinra is dedicating a full memorial service and parade in honor of the late outstanding SOLDIER 1st Class, Zackary Fair. The services are to run all this weekend, located at Shrina Tower Square. To a selfless servant who died in combat to protect the people. President Shrina thanks you."_

"Gave me a promotion and everything," Zack grumbles.

Cloud shakes his head and hands the phone back.

"Have you been able to reach anyone?" he asks.

"No. I'm afraid to. What if they track it?"

"I hadn't thought of that."

"That's what I'm here for, kid."

Cloud's mouth twitches but he doesn't quite let the smile go. Zack takes a suspense-laden drag off his vice and flips his phone closed. It's still dark out there. Over the world. It was just starting to get nice, too.

_Clang._

The whole of the ship shudders.

"Um."

Zack goes on the alert.

"Go check that gauge," he tells Cloud.

Cloud springs up and crosses the outlined cargo area, coming to the furnace housing in seconds. The airship rocks, shudders, shakes. He has to grab onto the metal hand bars jutting out around it just to stay on his feet. The ship's beating heart seizes and coughs out a blot of smoke right into his face. Its workings sound laboured.

"Are we over land?" Cloud coughs.

"That doesn't sound good," Zack replies.

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_Status: Ex-SOLDIER 3rd Class - Location questionable_

A streaking ball of flame.

A comet.

A meteor.

That's surely the thought on the minds of the residents of the little fishing town they're hurling towards. They're coming down hard, at a steadily increasing rate and there's nothing for it, so hold onto your hats. If they don't break up into a thousand shards of twisted airship shrapnel on impact, they might have a chance. A snowball's chance. He should start repenting now then, right? Get a head start.

Sweet, baby Ruhma, this is going to hurt.

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	9. part 9

**tell all** _by frooit_

_part nine_

_ff7 semi-au - eventual zack/cloud_  
"time eases on."

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He sees the flash before he hears or even notices the mass of it. Cid is sitting on a dock, a sea dock, 20 feet out to water, swigging off a brown bottle with a red label and yelling at the tide. What Cid is doing in a fishing town has something to do with rocket parts and shield housing, but really, it has everything to do with the brined booze. Gets you shit-faced while giving you kidney stones. _What a delight_, he'd thought. _That's the one for me_. So, here he is either way, swaying off a dock, watching the sky fall, drinking to his heart's content.

Totally at ease.

He's getting less and less sure of the sky falling and more and more sure that it must—because it defies all other explanation—the end of times. Or, hell, maybe it's a weather balloon. He takes a messy gulp, rubbing at his wet chin. Or it could be an angel, screaming to earth, wings and all, wanting nothing more than to desperately bed a real human man.

Cid hoots at that.

It could be anything.

But it's definitely heading here.

Totally at odds.

If he started running now he might make it to the end of the dock before being swept up in the hell fire. But, he gulps again, a generous amount of brined beer trickling into his already sullied shirt, and he stays.

"It's comin' right for us!"

Someone yells.

Someone on the beach.

Cid half turns.

And then it's on them.

The flaming thing skips off the water on its first contact, casting its front upwards to the blackened vault above, and sails clean over Cid's head. The force and noise knocks him flat onto the deck. The whole flaming thing continues on to crash and roll, over and over, throwing this and that, sand and the like, coming to a final resting point halfway up the beach.

Smoke pours into the night sky, smudging every star, now reaching for the owl-eyed Moon. Spots of flaming debris are burning into the sand. The coast and waterline already littered with boards and canvas. They bob in on the tide. Coiled piles of rope and wood beams snap and pop.

The scene is awesome.

Cid corrects himself and looks on.

"Damn."

He takes a final swig before heading in.

.

.

.

There is already a crowd down on the beach as Cid arrives. Groups are pulling wreckage over, looking in and under the junk, through the mayhem. A propeller hangs wedged in the smooth bend of a palm tree. A cockpit chair, sitting perfectly upright, straps and all, blazes away. And a woman, older than his own Ma', is pouring out water from her sun hat onto a burning bit of... well, that's a man, if he ever saw one. Cid hurries over, taking great big steps to get through the sand, careful to avoid the pyres, and any hiding hot bits.

"Hey, hey, oh. Cut it out."

The woman doesn't seem too good for anything other than a light shower and maybe a lengthy staring contest. She clucks and ambles off, probably in search of something else to water.

Cid crouches next to the man.

He's on his chest, laid out, face turned out of the sand. What was burning on him wasn't actually burning on him. It was an illusion, thank goodness, or maybe just some good old-fashioned drunkenness, but he's not burned. It was just some wood nearby.

"Oi. You."

He simply shakes him.

He's awfully warm to the touch.

"You dead?"

He shakes, harder.

"Dead boy."

The group on the beach has put out the fires of immediate threat to their town. They've started milling about now, scavenging and bull shitting.

Cid isn't surprised.

They're not the most comely of people, pirates. They'd sooner cut you than pull you from a fire. Sooner loot your pockets than help you off the ground. He doesn't deal with their kind if he can swing it, but cases sometimes call for the random illegal transaction. Rocket parts aren't the easiest things to come by, you know. Most of it is Shinra technology anyhow. You'd be crazy to look inside their borders. You'd be downright mad.

The man mumbles and twitches at last.

"Oh, hey. Good."

Cid is still really, very drunk. The world shifts suddenly, something explodes far off on the beach, and he tumbles onto his backside again. The man is up and on his feet when he makes it back to the upright position.

He's a mess, this one. Tall and strong and black of hair. Has some damn shoulders on him, look at that. As broad as the beach is. There's blood here and there. A cut somewhere up in his hairline is leaking steadily into his eyebrow and down his right temple. A tear in his blue trousers there, exposing knee, and there's sand, and ash. He steadies on his face and finds it loaded with an expression ready to bend steel.

"You're not dead."

Cid carries on the role of narrator.

The man looks down at him, eyes like cooling metal, fraying electricity, super heated coils, flaming petrol, something very, very intense, and then he turns and just... walks off.

A little unsteady maybe, but the dead man walks.

Cid cocks his head.

"Hey, you. Wait a minute."

Cid tries to stand and fails, twice.

"You can't just... come, flaming into the night... n' crash everywhere," he gestures with his hands for show, "and then... walk off. Like nothin' happened. That's not how it works."

He's trailing behind him. Every step is a challenge. The sand is too loose and too much. He teeters and sways, trying to match his greater pace.

"Who are you anyhow?"

The man answers, squarely and brittle.

"Lost."

"Yeah," Cid agrees with an excited bark. "Y'must be to find yourself in this fine establishment. Nothing but back-stab—"

He's not exactly listening, Cid's new companion, he's heading to the wreckage of his ship. What Cid has decided is a ship. One doesn't just fall out of the sky, and certainly not in a boat.

"You lose control or somethin'?"

"You could say that."

"Hah. Sense of humour intact."

The man swings on him suddenly, almost sending him to his ass again. He's all he can see, the dead man, his unchanging face, and those same eyes, with that same intensely melting stare. Cat eyes. Animal eyes.

Feral, he decides.

"Where's Cloud?"

"Huh? Clouds?"

Cid wobbles back a step and points to the stars.

"Up there ya ninny."

"No," the man says, clearly annoyed, "my _partner_. His name is Cloud. He's small, blonde, has one eye. He was with me."

"Only found you. Anyone else bound to have _been_ found. Everyone's digging 'round in your wreckage. Saw one hauling away a sword. You might—"

"Where?"

The man's grabbing him, shaking him much like he'd done to him just a few moments ago.

"Calm it. I'll show ya."

.

.

.

The group is large. The central mass gathered around a larger bit of the dead man's burning ship. They're using it as a camp fire. They've had to come some ways down the beach to reach them. People have trailed this way out of boredom, sticky fingers, or drunken wobbling.

"I'll be wanting that."

This isn't exactly a friendly group. Certainly not one to pose questions at all willy-nilly. Some have hatchets, blades, brass knuckles, clubs, missing teeth, gold teeth, and boozed up breath. Cid knows this. He doesn't need to see it. The very one this man is regarding has a huge belly and a black beard. He could chew through a tree stump, and he doesn't look too thrilled to be called out.

"Who are you then?" the huge mass of a man grumbles. "Found this fair and square, I did. On my beach no less."

He feels the blade.

It's laid over his fat thighs.

"It's mine, actually. And I really don't have time for this," the man retorts.

He doesn't look swayed in the least.

Cid sidles away and back, not sure how this event will pan out. And if it does happen to get ugly, his hands are staying clean. He might be big, this crash-landed fella', this sky-fallen dead man, but he's still half the other man's damn size.

"_It's mine_, he says," the bearded man sing-songs his taunt. His gut trembles, his beard sways with his shaking head.

The closest group laughs.

"What are ya gonna do about it then, pretty boy?"

The man stays silent, his fists are forming, looking rather large in the fire light. Meanwhile, Cid's stopped his retreat. He's probably a good five meters back. From this vantage he can see people creeping in closer from the outskirts. More curious eyes.

"Put that lovely mouth o' yours to good use, I would."

The smile is cruel, a promise. The teeth inside just as black as his beard (several are missing altogether), just as black as the whole of his eyes.

The group laughs once more, booze sloshing, swords clanging, cheers rising. More maws flash broken chompers, and giant guts rumble and sway. The group is quite a lot larger than it was before the first exchange, growing with a gaggle of strange faces of all shapes and ages.

They laugh just that once more.

The next scene isn't much to laugh about.

If Cid has it correct anyway.

He is still really very drunk.

The dead man is quick, too quick. He shoots in, grabs the sword off the fat man's lap, and slashes up with it. Fully upwards. A salute to the sky he came from. The bearded fat lug is cut full up his barrel belly and to his black beard. He narrowly guts him like a fish. Or a whale shark, really. The blood wells slowly to the surface, colouring his blue tattered shirt, colouring the evening.

The group looks on.

No more laughter from them.

The bearded man howls as the dead man leaves.

.

.

.

"They'll kill ya for that, you know," Cid informs.

"Let them try."

The man, his reclaimed sword in hand, having dealt with the bearded pirate and his oh-so loyal friends, makes for his busted ship once more. The hulk of it landed just over there, thirty meters, to Cid's pilot's eyes. What he hopes to find might very well still be twisted up in the debris.

"Cloud!" the man starts calling.

Cid joins in.

"Oi, Clouds!"

He gets a peevish look.

They circle the wreckage twice, calling out.

Nothing happens. No one calls back to them, weakly and dying, and no body is found. Small pockets of fires burn on, smoking up, looking like red and black pillars. This bit is just smoking, having been thoroughly doused by the towns people. It's probably a real sight from afar.

The man looks deflated, tired now. Like he might actually have just come screaming, and flaming from the sky. More like a man and less like the angel (but really, as he's concluded, a demon) Cid's hazy brain has made him out to be. His horizon-broad shoulders are sagging. His pace is slowed.

Cid is wrestling with a pang.

An unusual itch.

A sensation he's unused to.

It looks like sympathy, but it sure smells of pity.

"If you're looking for a boy, sir, they took him to the inn."

The boy this voice comes from looks no older than seven.

He'd been watching them Cid realizes.

The man asks where this inn is and then he's off again, trekking up the beach and to the inner town. Cid follows at his own pace this time. An easy, slow and steady pace. Every step is a big one, his foot filling the prints of the man before him. It makes his going a mite easier.

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_Status: Ex-SOLDIER 3rd class - Location unknown_

Zack's thoughts have gone from _ouch_ to _I lost him_, to nothing else. The morbid humour of having survived two crashes in as many days (or not, as far as an old man can say) doesn't even register.

He came to with a headache and a throbbing leg, and side, and spine (a hell of a combo), but _he lost him_. He felt sick enough to throw up, sick enough to fail and fall, because he lost him. He very much just wanted to be rescued and cared for, and put to bed. You know. To feel safe, warm, at ease, but he lost him. So, he's fucked. What's the point? Game over.

Because of some beach rat kid though, now he's not so fucked. He just has to get to this inn, and find him, retrieve him, and figure out where they are. Then they're slightly less fucked. As a group.

Together again.

"What?"

"Huh?"

"You said something," the drunk man says.

This man has been following him since he woke up. He hasn't been much help, but he hasn't been an enemy either. Zack will let him be for now.

"I didn't," Zack answers.

"You did. Sounded like _lost_, or somethin'. I know you're lost, son. We both are hell. I've been wander—"

Zack isn't listening again. The inn rises before them, situated behind a minor town square. It's a two story cabin style building, naked tree logs supporting the balcony above. A woman watches their approach from the railing. The front doors are open, a disturbance audible from inside. The township around is sleepy for the most part. Everyone's busy on the beach.

Zack strides ahead, the drunken man bringing up the rear.

"Please, just let me go!"

In the lobby there's Cloud and two men fighting.

Well, Zack can't say _fighting_. Having a disagreement more like it. Cloud looks like a little boy arguing with his parents.

The two men have him trapped in a red arm chair, holding him still, consoling and reasoning, but Cloud listens not. He looks ruffled and bruised and a little bit singed, but other than that, he's alive.

And he's found him.

"Cloud."

It's cute, really, heart warming, soul destroying, how he stops his fretting and looks over to him. As soon as he sees him he's up, throwing the men's arms off with a power he didn't know he had. He doesn't get very far, to Zack's displeasure, because he's spilling out onto the floor the next moment. He stays there until he's lifted him to his feet.

Zack has to resist hugging him, bringing him close, comforting him, touching him, so he bites his tongue instead. Bites until he can taste coins.

"I think it's broken."

"That's all we need," Zack groans.

Cloud leans into him, his full weight a pittance.

"You have the satchel."

"Uh, oh. Yeah," Cloud mumbles. "I must have grabbed it when we went down. I came to with it in my arms."

He looks mildly embarrassed by that.

Zack turns to their drunken friend.

"We need a room."

The man doesn't seem to comprehend.

Zack's blood pressure skyrockets.

"Hey! Did you hear me?"

"I have a room. Here for one more forsaken night, to be honest. Heading home tomorrow morning. You can bunk with—"

"Thanks," Zack cuts in, "What day is it?"

"Uhh," the man drones.

He finally blinks and looks to his slovenly, sandy hand.

He starts counting out his fingers.

_One, two... one, two three..._

"Friday, I think. Should be."

"Good. We still have time."

Zack looks to Cloud.

Cloud shrugs his shoulders.

The drunken man belches.

.

.

.

Getting beyond the annoyance of seeing strangers wearing his clothing is proving hard for Zack. Harder than it should rightly be. What does he care if some woman is wearing Cloud's gifted tundra coat? Why should he care if another is sporting his stupid fluffy hat? And there's Cloud's blue scarf.

_Because it's all you've got._

That's true.

In a way.

But, also not.

He's got Cloud, limping along next to him, having considerable trouble mounting the staircase to Cid's (they finally exchanged pleasantries) room. He's got his health. He's not dead. They're not dead. But they very well could be. Later today. Tonight. Probably tomorrow.

In the meantime, they're stuck in a town full of scavengers. They're going to recoup and then form some kind of plan. A plan that gets them to Midgar before the weekend is over, before all sorts of rabble leaves the city. They'll have thousands of faces to blend in with during his _ceremony_.

It's the best plan he's got.

It's just missing a key element.

They reach Cid's room. There's a bathroom, a wall heater, a bed, and a love seat inside. Not to mention a tiny curtained window, of course. It points to the sea, if you could see through it. It's fogged up now.

Zack deposits Cloud onto the love seat. It's three short steps. He's hissing, pulling a face even so. All those wonderful signs of pain. He was better on the stairs. It's getting worse then. The satchel though, that's an asset. A thing he'd counted lost, along with his "damsel".

He starts through it as Cloud reclines, able to rest again. Cid's milling about the room, unable to rest. Too much booze, or too little. All that nervous energy has built up.

The satchel is still full of their few belongings. The rations, the bandages, his cigarettes (his lighter's still in his pocket), his cell phone (probably battery dead by now), a lone bit of hemp string, and two flat stones. He frowns at these.

He finds what he's looking for after a tense moment. And, oh, he couldn't be happier. He couldn't want to sing out the joy more. As ridiculous as it sounds. But, this is a good one. This is a good moment.

His hand glows brightly as he removes it from the satchel.

Cid starts and comes over to look.

"Materia! I knew it. You boys are dangerous."

He stomps across the room.

"Knew it from your boots, dead man. Should ah listened to my gut. Ain't no man I've seen wear those. Only soldiers do."

Zack ignores him. He equips the restore materia and gets to work.

He's caught off guard by the voices. You're bound to forget that. It's disarming, the whispering and noise. Always so static and uncanny. They're low enough though, these voices, a quiet, calming sort of lyric. The materia itself is a low grade. He doubts very much it can handle a broken leg, but it's better than nothing.

He simply has to touch Cloud. That's the fastest route anyway.

The entire room lights up a mellow green.

Cid is probably freaking out to some degree behind him.

The voices begin to shift and change as he concentrates. They grow less calm, more wandering and worrisome. They'll pick up a rant and chant on, and then divert to a chatter of nonsense. If it was disarming before, it's unsettling now.

He's noticing something else.

They're not random. It's just one voice. And it's familiar.

He feels like a dumbass for not getting it sooner.

It's Cloud.

He's hearing Cloud.

He pulls his hand back and the connection is broken.

Cloud sighs, eye closed.

Cid coughs.

Zack gets a whiff of cigarette smoke.

Situation still improving.

"Can I get a hit off that?" Zack asks, turning.

He's already got his hand out, poised.

Cid doesn't bat an eyelash and hands it over.

He lights a new one, smiling cheekily.

Zack is supremely relieved.

This Cid is an alright guy.

"We need your help."

"With what exactly?" Cid muses.

"The two of us, we need to get to Midgar as soon as possible."

Cid mulls this over visibly, nearly comically.

"We've been through a lot of shit. We could use a hand. I don't have any money, he's injured. I need to see my parents. Something terrible is going to happen to me. I'm not in the habit of saying please, but please."

Cid nods.

Zack holds off.

"That's a lot of stuff," Cid answers at length.

The silence in between had Zack wondering if he should continue.

"I have a truck, in the fields. The bed is as big as a house. You two can hold up back there or whatnot. I don't care. Won't even notice ya."

Zack's smile triumphantly returns.

"Thanks."

"By the way," Cid continues, "you two should use the shower. You're all sooty."

Zack has to rouse Cloud and help him to the bathroom. He sits him down there on the toilet, seat down of course, and investigates the shower. No tub. That'll make things complicated.

Fresh towels sit on the counter top. Wash cloths too.

"I'll just rub you down."

Cloud nods, still clearly beat, too tired to argue.

He's still modest though, protesting to keep his pants on.

Zack has to relent.

He dampens a wash cloth and starts with his face, wiping away the soot and sweat. His face becomes smooth and white again, so bereft of any colouring but his lips. And those lips are close. And they're surely red. Close enough to—it's not a long kiss. He's not keen on Cid walking in for any reason.

Cloud appears somewhat more aware after.

"What was that for?"

"No reason."

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.

.

.


	10. part 10

**tell all** _by frooit_

_part ten_

_ff7 semi-au - eventual zack/cloud_  
"some travel, some thought."

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Zack sleeps uneasily that night, be he does sleep some.

_Status: Ex-SOLDIER 3rd Class - Location: Tier, fishing town_

Even after a hot shower, another cigarette and something to eat, he still couldn't bring his racing thoughts under control. He lay on the floor and worried.

Cloud was out after he'd finished cleaning up and he reset him on the love seat. Too beat from... well, everything. The whole lot. The thick of it. He's in the very same position he left him the night before, upright against the back of the seat, feet on their heels, legs stretched out. Didn't even adjust or turn his head. He still looks just as worn out, like an orphan boy with his head sash and torn clothes. A snatch of shut eye isn't going to cure him. He's going to need something stronger down the road.

He doesn't want to wake him yet, but. He gets close, leaning over, hand braced on the arm rest. He can hear his steady breathing, feel his radiant heat, even smell him, the sweat stuck down in his threads.

Maybe gone feverish again.

He puts his free hand to Cloud's forehead. It's warm but not hot.

"How is he?"

Cid's packing up a haggard brown pack on the bed.

The straps look ready to pull apart.

"He's fine."

"Good. Wake him. We're outta here in five."

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.

.

They have to borrow a pair of sandals from Cid for Cloud. After they took off his stylish lady boots in the inn's room, his leg was too swollen and tender to put them back on again. Neither Zack nor Cloud mourned the loss of the article.

The woman that had watched their coming from the balcony gave Zack a cut of cheese, bread and a thermos of coffee for them anyway.

All things considered, they haven't made out too badly. Cloud is being characteristically quiet, their stomachs are full, and Zack isn't feeling so worn out thanks to the warm drink. He even has cigarettes and a lighter and cell phone signal. The thing wasn't dead after all. If it holds out to Midgar they might be able to contact Kunsel.

Cid said he'd have them to the badlands, an area surrounding Midgar, by sun down. That's a long jaunt. About half a day, he warned them, and they'd have to hoof it to the city. He doesn't have good relations there.

They hunker down in the truck's bed, as wide as a house (Cid was correct), and wait the jaunt out. The truck bounces along, huge tires barreling over small rocks and boulders, fording streams and swamp land alike. They're far up off the ground, watching the scenery spin by indifferently.

Cid's machine is a beast. Peeled yellow paint defines the unusually tiny cab, black smoke pours from a thick exhaust pipe. The rest of it is truck bed, steel guarded on either side, ribbed on the floor. A skeletal frame built for canvas but missing the canvas stretches over them. Two rocket casings positioned behind the cab stick out far beyond the frame's span.

Zack sways and bumps.

Cloud does the same.

They take great care in keeping his leg suspended.

"I can't believe it."

He has to say it rather loudly, even considering their distance. Zack is sitting across from him, legs folded like a pretzel, Cloud's shins supported by his crossed ankles. Zack still isn't sure if he heard him right.

"What do you mean?" he offers.

"That we're alive."

He hears that.

"Don't dwell on it. You'll miss the enjoyment."

Cloud lightly smiles.

He turns his head to watch the trees flit by.

Zack is glad.

He wouldn't have been able to smile back.

Not just yet.

He's saving them these days.

.

.

.

Hours stack up. Hours without words passing between them.

It's not unwelcome.

They each get to collect their thoughts respectively.

For Zack, that might take a few revisits.

He's not sure how he feels about crashing twice. If he should be feeling indestructible—he did come through with little to no injuries—or like the unluckiest bum alive.

Cloud lost an eye and broke a leg.

You _could_ chalk that up to his fragile makeup.

_He needs to drink more milk. And to stop worrying. He's worrying right now._

_Look at him._

If this works, his plan, he'll teach him not to be so uptight.

Teach him to relax and unwind.

He's dually unsure of how things will turn out in Midgar, with that man.

His ex-General. His ex-bed-pal.

At length, as the Sun dips low, they start seeing less and less trees and green things. The grade smooths and becomes flat. The land turns brown and dusty. There might still be trees out there but they're mostly twisted, gnarly things, looking more like zombie hands reaching up from underneath.

It doesn't reassure good thoughts. It doesn't breed good mind sets.

The Sun is nearly gone by the time Cid stops the truck and cuts the engine. He hangs out his door and yells back to them. He gives the thumbs up and waves.

Regardless of not being able to hear him they get the idea and hop down. Zack has to half catch, half pull Cloud down from the height. He looks ruffled and indignant as a result.

To Zack's surprise, Cid has jumped down from his rig and is waiting for them around front. He's probably sober by now. He looks a little younger, maybe in his mid-thirties. A wire of a man.

"Got something here."

He doesn't give Zack the chance to ask.

He simply slaps a small something into his palms.

"What I got left over."

It's a plastic card, 200 gil printed on the bottom left corner.

Zack is incredulous.

"You don't need—"

Cid barks a laugh.

"I figure, I've got a warm bed to go home to. I figure, I've got a truck, and a business, and a woman. You know? I figure, at the end of the night, I'm not wondering if I'll be alive the next morning."

"Thank you."

Cloud says it first.

"Yeah, thanks."

Zack repeats it.

"Don't spend it all in one place."

He laughs again.

They step well back from the truck as he fires it up.

He's off their radar in minutes, rumbling back in the opposite direction.

"I like him better than the last one," Zack says.

Cloud shakes his head.

The Sun sets.

It's immediately black.

"Whoa."

Zack turns, following Cloud's voice.

It's Midgar, in the distance.

The city looks sick.

"And we're going there," Zack confirms.

"Yeah, thanks," Cloud chides.

He tries not to feel bad about that and fails.

He takes a good breath in, shoulders back, spine straight, and exhales.

"Let's go then."

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.

.

It becomes steadily brighter as they gain on Midgar. The city is quite large. A plate covering a hidden city underneath. She's green all around because of towers tipped with streaming mako. All the excess just shoots off into the atmosphere like a mist, like green breath mint spray. Some think they're poisoning the air. It's hard not to think they're doing something wrong given the state of the sucked dry land around it.

If they had to storm this city, they'd be spotted miles off. There's literally nothing to hide behind. A few red boulders maybe, but mostly just flatness and dryness, destitution. Zack's thankful it's night.

They might be gaining sure enough, but it's still slow going.

He carries Cloud on his back a distance.

He's getting tired.

"Can we stop?"

It's Cloud's inquiry.

"Sure."

Zack lights a cigarette, crouches with his partner, and watches the city. There's definitely a big fanfare going on out there. Air ships float closely by, high up near the upper plates. Flood lights spin and turn, shining off the floating things. Distantly you can hear cheers, a massive crowd, music. Horns and tambourines, or something. Something insanely upbeat.

The random firework pops and fades.

"What are we doing? Exactly."

Zack takes a drag and puffs it through his nose. Two jets sail out.

"We'll get up there, we'll enter the city. Have to stay in the slums though, for now. Get a room, stay low."

"You said something about a friend?"

"Yeah. Kunsel. He might be able to help us."

"Okay."

Cloud is regarding his leg then. He's holding it with both hands, just steady there, not feeling or moving, like he's stopping it from trying to get away, or getting worse.

"Does it hurt much?"

Zack would use the restore again, but it's sketchy here. With no cover the glow from the thing might attract attention. What kind of attention would have to remain to be seen, but _any_ attention certainly isn't welcome.

"No, it's alright."

Zack's sure as shit that's a lie.

A particularly loud firework booms.

They set the bone hours ago to Cloud's bitten back screams, him and Cid.

They needed two people to do it. Used wood left over from their air ship to make a splint, and rope to tie and secure it.

He can't really muck it up anymore than it already is. It's not exactly getting the treatment it needs though.

.

.

.

An hour later, by Zack's internal clock, they get up to the city.

The entrance this side isn't anything fancy. Nothing grand or welcoming, just an industrial sized glass sliding door, striped with hazard paint, red on white. There's a number _06_ above the door in yellow. They don't guard or watch these doors.

It used to be different years ago. You had to have a valid I.D. and papers, deeds to land in the area, or in Midgar. You had to prove your excellence. The security cameras are still hanging around, pointed down at them as they walk by. Their eyes long dead but unblinking.

Today, all you have to do is walk in.

The fanfare and music echoes. A minor fizzle in the air.

No one disrupts their going. People are moving around sure enough. They're milling about trash can fires. They're picking at bits of broken machinery, burning plastic housings, thin metal casings. They stand in groups, talking, and then break away. Some smoke, or drink, or watch them go, but they don't interject.

It's all the more pleasing for Zack.

Nearly all of them wear white surgical masks.

Once they're through the doors to Midgar's slums, they're immediately engulfed in a living human smell and smoke and miscellaneous fumes. Next, they're blocked in by the heaps of junk and refuse, and blinded by the darkness.

It's worse in here than outside the city.

It's always midnight here.

They'll have to go a ways in to get to any sort of civilization, with any sort of hotels or resources. The outskirts are just left over bits and pieces of the city. Old cars, robots, machines. He sees ovens, refrigerators, and the like. Small pockets of people set up camp along the way, but for the most part it's lonely going.

They pass a giant pillar fenced off. It's one of the many used to suspend the city above. People don't live around these usually.

They don't like to be reminded.

He's getting tired again when they come across a huddle of vehicles. A few busses and dump trucks circled around each other. A small sedan and a jeep sit in the center of this crude circle. Something stripped of its body rests closest to them. Cables and wires run across the ground, winding into vehicles and off to go somewhere else. Electricity snaps and fizzles. There are rubbed raw tires, stacked boxes, a mostly wooden shack. Signs and lights hang everywhere (a mess of them: Christmas lights, naked bulbs, candles).

It's its own little town.

There's a supply shop, a smoke shop (curiously), an "inn" (that's the bus), and the jeep. Across the jeep's green door is a green and white cross. It's not very well done. Very abstract.

Medical, hopefully.

He heads there first, dragging Cloud along with him.

It's the longest three-legged race he's ever been in.

As they approach, they find an old man sitting on the hood of the jeep. White Christmas lights are strung around him in a net. They wink, blink, and pulse. The man is calm, unmoving. He doesn't greet them.

Zack struggles up and lets Cloud down.

There's a crate for him to rest on.

"Excuse me," Zack starts.

The old man remains.

A small display of bottles takes up a stand in front of the jeep.

"Do you know medicine? Or have a potion? An Elixir?"

"Elixir 500 gil."

"I have 200. What will that get me?"

"Potion."

"Just a potion?"

Zack is surprised. Let down.

"He has a broken leg. Don't you think you can give me a discount or something? I'd owe you one. I'm good for it. I'll be in the city."

"No exception. 500 gil."

"You're killing me, man."

"No killing. Have potion."

"Fine. Give me the potion."

He hands him the white card reluctantly.

He expects to get the potion and nothing else.

The old man gives him two potions, and the card back.

"Buy one get one free. Change 150 gil."

"Uh, thanks."

He watches Cloud take the potion.

It's a small dose, no bigger than a shot of alcohol.

"How do you feel?"

"It tastes awful."

Cloud pulls a face.

"They need a cherry," Zack jokes.

"I am feeling better," Cloud admits.

"Good. Can you make it over there?"

"Yeah."

He's leaning more on his bad leg now, he's more alert.

They make it to the bus and get a room. Well, bench. Two of them. 20 gil a night. Inside, "rooms" are segregated by hanging sheets and lit by rainbow strands of Christmas cheer. Faint crackling music plays, the words hard to make out, but it's calm, edging toward nice.

It is, however, not the most private of places.

He gets Cloud to his bench and then takes his own. He leaves the satchel with Cloud. He then finds himself with his sword next to him on the bench, almost underneath him, and staring up at the rusted-out ceiling of a bus. He had to pull his knees in to even begin to fit on the seat.

Too damn tall.

It is nice though. Cozy, he guesses. It's quiet too, save for that electrical snap and hum, and the radio, but that's methodical and intermittent. Something to train on, fall asleep to. And he's absolutely spent. That won't be a problem tonight.

They're in Midgar either way.

Time for things to get hairy.

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.

.

_Status: SOLDIER 1st Class - Location: Midgar (Shinra Tower)_

He was informed as of yesterday, at 14:00 hours, that one of the targets, of the two known fugitives they're tracking**,** accessed the company website. Two pages were viewed for less than a minute each. The window was small. It was brief but it was telling. It's very easy to say they're still alive.

Sephiroth is delighted.

Delighted by the chance of another meeting.

An epic end.

He has some wants.

One of those is a good death.

Another is revenge.

They couldn't catch him on the continent, but they'll get him now. Because of something a soldier would forget in his training. Because of something Sephiroth didn't. He's regarded as the best after all.

All Shinra administered devices have tracking units built in. As of five minutes ago he was informed his unit picked up the target's device's tracker, and it's somewhere in the city. It could be that someone found it and came to the city, to seek fortune, women, a good time, but, more likely, it's their fugitive.

He doesn't deploy a unit.

He goes alone.

A little sport is what he really needs.

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.

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_Status: Ex-SOLDIER 3rd Class - Location: Midgar slums (sector 06)_

He's pretty sure he's dreaming.

There's the beach out there, a step away. The sand is white, so white, it's hard to look at straight on. The sky above, the big blue, is just that; it goes on and ever on. Clouds move lazily this way and that. The ocean is calm, rolling in, licking, lapping. The wind brings with it the ocean smells. Salt, sea weed, good things. Things from home.

Cloud is sitting by the tide, feet deep in the warm sand. His hair is sun fire, blazing. He wears summer clothes. He looks so small, so distant, unreal. Zack has to blink and cover his eyes as he approaches.

He immediately wishes he hadn't.

It's Cloud, but the Cloud as he was back on the continent.

Back when he found him in the snow.

The helmet's there, the uniform.

Cloud turns as he comes up.

Zack's chest tightens painfully.

The visor is broken as it was, bloody as it was.

Cloud reaches out a hand, his glove smoking, glistening.

It's soaked in blood.

It drips with it.

The sand beneath so white it could be snow.

The liquid so red it could be real.

.

.

.

The radio is playing much louder when he comes to.

Loud enough to make out the words.

It's a man singing. A sad sort of tune.

_I've lost all ambition or worldly acclaim_

_I just want to be the one you love_

He listens on.

_And with your admission that you feel the same_

_I'll have reached the goal I'm dreaming of_

It's making his chest tighten in that same painful way.

He likes dreams... if only because you get to wake up from them. Here, in reality, he's still fighting for his life, and the life of another. He's still on the run, beaten and bloody, scrambling for a plan, scrambling for relief. He's still stuck, like a netted thing, waiting for the axe to drop.

He gets both feet on the floor and stretches.

He could brush the ceiling if he tried.

He yawns and cracks his neck.

The bench where Cloud sleeps is silent. The sheets hang quietly, the Christmas lights glow warmly. Innocent. Completely ignorant.

He pulls the sheet back.

.

.

.

"Did my friend leave? Did you see him leaving?"

"What? Huh?"

Zack throttles the man. Even behind the counter, beyond the bars that are supposed to protect him, Zack throttles him. He has to reach and contort through the gaps but his grip is deadly, angry, growing angrier.

"_Did_ my friend _leave_?"

"Uhh, yeah, yeah. Take it easy."

Zack's grip lessens. An ache is starting to form.

"He left with another guy."

"Another guy?"

Zack shakes him. His head bangs into the bars.

"Uh, _ow_, geez. A guy in black, long hair. He—he—"

Zack lets him go, pulling him into the bars one last time.

It's not nice, but he isn't feeling very nice.

_Sephiroth_.

_Sephiroth has Cloud._

"Hey, hey! He said—"

Zack pauses.

"You—you might want to throw away your phone."

Zack scowls.

"And you know where to find him."

Of course he does.

"You can have this if you tell me how to get to the station."

He's offering his phone.

Truth is, he'd just toss it in the refuse otherwise.

"Uh, uh, east," the battered man points, "that way."

"Thanks," Zack offers.

He leaves the phone on the counter.

The man stares it down as if it were a cobra.

Cloud has the satchel, but he doesn't have the money or the cigarettes.

And thank the powers that be for that.

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.

.

.


	11. part 11

**tell all** _by frooit_

_part eleven_

_ff7 semi-au - eventual zack/cloud_  
"by the hand of a man in black."

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_Status: Infantry Cadet - Location: Shinra Tower (SOLDIER dorms)_

Lights in the distance flick off and on, a steady strobe. Midgar is out there, below; a city of blinking, drinking, swaying and darkness, and so much despair. She's sleeping, and entirely, maybe blissfully, unaware of the situation unfolding above her head.

The conversation has been slow and one-sided.

Cloud hasn't given the man much and he's carried on by himself.

"I was expecting to have to subdue you, you see. Imagine my delight at not having to. That might have spoiled our relationship. Besides, seems he's done a fair enough job at keeping you... loyal."

The man's eyebrow rises. One singular and deadly beautiful thing. A silver edge, a sharp blade. He is still, hands down, the tallest man Cloud's ever seen. Certainly the cruelest.

"You haven't forgotten what I told you about him? Hmm?"

"No," Cloud grits.

_No matter how hard I try._

"He's gone bad, our Zack. And how good he was. Did he tell you about his record? About the war? He was a machine. Unstoppable."

Sephiroth continues, looking rather bored with it all despite. He's sitting in his chair (halfway a throne), cross ways, playing the part of the predator and villain very well. He lolls his head back, a great fall of hair spilling out over the arm rest, narrowly sweeping the floor.

It's a white-gold curtain.

Cloud shifts, wincing, chewing at his lips. He's nervous, to say the least, but he's also hurting. His leg, and the means they traveled, haven't done much for his state. He's borderline out of it, hanging on by a whim.

"No."

"That's a shame. He was really very proud of it. Killed many a man."

Sephiroth sits upright, hair a little wild.

"He was such a good boy."

It's all said in such a vacant tone, or it might just be the wind in Cloud's head masking it. That noise, the hollow whoosh, growing steadily with his unease. It must be his very life draining away. He's feeling similarly hollow.

"Did he tell you about us?"

His face mirrors that vacancy.

Just a white mask.

Cloud hesitates.

"No," he says, with difficulty.

Sephiroth's mouth twitches before it turns into a smile.

A wicked smile, a downright rotten smile.

"You and I have a secret."

Cloud shifts again. He's sitting on a bed, a big navy blue bed. It's made and folded up nice, smelling clean and crisp, unused. Thick black bedposts meet with the ceiling. He's sitting at the very edge of the yielding mattress, holding his leg out, trying not to whine or cry or yell for Zack, for some help, for just a little bit of help, _please_.

The room is dimly lit. It's not easy to tell how big it is, or even if they're alone. The distance between him and the door to the outside (and freedom, and Zack) is discouraging. He could crawl if he tried, and he would, but he would also bet he wouldn't get very far.

Sephiroth stands.

Cloud is startled out of his thought.

Leather creaks and stretches.

He's right. About him being loyal. But not the reason why.

"You're very small. And very young. I know why he likes you."

He's regarding Cloud, fully invading his space. A hand, gloved, lifts his chin up, right into two cool green eyes. Cloud finds he can't look away. Finds his pain is easing, dropping away. Finds his heart is racing, his jaw slackening. Finds he can't remember why he wanted to leave.

"You're fragile. Easy to sway."

His breath is cool against his face.

"And innocent."

It smells divine. Of green tea and something sweet.

"But..."

He drops his hand. Cloud's head remains as it was, lifted up.

"Do you see? Can't you? What he's doing to you?"

Cloud blinks and swallows, that sweet haze lifting.

His pulse keeps fast, conflicting with the wind's whoosh.

It's terribly loud now.

"He's killing you."

Sephiroth crouches in front of him, low on his knees.

He's looking up into his face, almost kindly, almost pitying.

"You've lost your eye."

He reaches a hand to touch.

Cloud flinches away.

"You've lost your leg."

He reaches there as well.

Cloud pulls it back, outright groaning into the General's face.

"And what has he lost?"

There's a heavy silence.

City lights spin and blind.

"Me," Cloud interjects.

Sephiroth is surprised. Not exactly shocked, bowled over, or astonished, but he certainly wasn't expecting the resistance.

"His life, his parents... his _honor_."

Sephiroth stands, looking down on him. His face is shaded, dark, dismal.

What could be there could only be bad.

"Wrong," Sephiroth disputes, "His parents abandoned him years ago, in a forest. He doesn't even know their names. How could he? Zack is a Shinra name. He gave up his life and his honor when he defied us."

"You're lying! And _defied_ you? You tried to kill him! You're _still_ trying."

"Look at what he's done to you," Sephiroth says blandly, and paces away.

Cloud's heart pounds on.

If only he could run.

If only he could...

"Yes. We both have a secret," Cloud starts. "You wanted him for yourself, didn't you? But you couldn't keep him. Look at what I've lost? Look at what you _threw_ away. We loved you..."

Cloud sniffs.

"_I_ loved you."

He finds he's holding in tears.

Finds he can't let them go even if he wanted to.

He's still broken.

The man stands in shadow.

"You're mad, crazy," he finishes, sniffling all the same.

It echoes in the room, rebounds. The fanfare outside muted.

"Is mad wanting what you want? Is mad wanting what is rightly yours?"

"I don't understand."

Cloud has grown tired.

Sephiroth returns to him again, looking down.

It must be something he's so used to.

"In four hours I'm going to kill you."

The tears are coming on again, stinging and hot.

He's close again too, leaning down, his nose within bumping distance.

That gloved hand squeezes Cloud's bad leg, his sweet breath haunting.

"I promise that."

Cloud knows true fear, terror, pain, and now the promise of more.

"He has that long to win you."

.

.

.

_Status: Ex-SOLDIER 3rd Class - Location: Midgar train (#4334)_

Zack finds the train station. He's on his way to the upper plates sooner than he would like, but he hasn't a choice. Cloud's been gone for a half an hour now. He knows deep down, from muscle memory, and his piled up troubles and history, that he doesn't have long to locate them and liberate Cloud.

It's not the locating that's the problem though, it's the getting there.

It's also the not-getting-shot-by-a-guard, and not letting his emotions get the best of him. Because, oh, it is so easy to want to go there.

But he mustn't.

He takes a seat on the train instead, heavily, spine thumping hard metal, and starts to think. Really think. Goes into a trance and plays out the motions, goes through the scenes, the possibles and could-bes.

The train toots and pulls away from the station.

Sephiroth could have killed him already.

Or he might be waiting to do it in front of him.

He could be guarding the tower, ready to shoot him down.

He might not even get off this train.

It's not going to stop him. He's not going to give in. It can try all it wants, devious doubt, but he's got better things to do. If he's learned anything from these last few days it's not to give in. If he's pulled anything from his SOLDIER training it's to do what must be done in the face of whatever comes. He's too damn stubborn besides.

And too damn stupid.

The map of the train routes hangs just over his shoulder. He turns and looks, getting an idea of an estimated time of arrival. It's looking good, as far as it can at this point. He'll stay on this train all the way to the surface plates and make his way from there to Shinra Tower. At that very point though, standing at those front doors, anything could happen.

He had to stow his sword in a compartment at the front of the train. Some strict _no sharp objects/weapons on a train_ law. He's somewhere near the back, far from anyone and the threat of small talk. He feels naked without it, that broad sword. The absence is wide.

Not to mention the space Cloud should be filling.

His charm. His totem.

The train toots again, streaming by another station. It's a _flash, flash, flash_ of red and yellow across Zack's face as it passes. Four more of those and then it's their stop. And possible death.

_No smoking_ signs plaster the train's innards, but he's alone.

He lights up and puffs.

It helps little.

.

.

.

_Status: Infantry Cadet - Location: Shinra Tower (SOLDIER dorms)_

It's been an hour.

An hour and six minutes.

He knows this because Sephiroth knows this. He isn't letting him forget. He's checking the clock regularly, shooting that vacant, bored voice across the cavernous room to Cloud's ears and his doubts.

He knows this is Sephiroth's room.

He knows this is the very same room he shared with Zack.

That hurts some.

All the more grief for his ultimate tally.

Sephiroth starts to hum.

It's a catchy tune, something uplifting.

But, it's not doing its job very well.

Cloud shifts, leaning a little more onto the bed, giving his back a break.

This seems to give the man an idea though, to Cloud's dismay. He gets up and stalks over, every step long, every foot fall a metallic beat. He sits right next to him, ungodly amounts of hair swishing, the bed giving him plenty of room. It sags lightly. Cloud would shift again, putting just that much more space between them, but he doesn't.

He locks eyes with Sephiroth, and by then it's all over.

"You are very attractive, Cloud."

He listens intently. He thinks he might have smiled too, because now the man's smiling, that awful smile, and coming closer still, stealing up that precious empty space, crowding in.

It's terrifying, and there's not a damn thing he can do about it.

Lips press to his throat.

Cloud doesn't move.

He hardly takes a breath.

They're warm, secretly appealing. They hide a warmer tongue that flicks out and runs along collarbone to just under his ear, leaving a wet trail.

Cloud shivers.

Sephiroth pushes him fully onto the bed.

He goes, letting the soft mattress receive him.

It's as if he's watching from a great height.

From somewhere way off and safe.

This isn't happening to him, no, this is just a movie.

A fantasy.

A bad dream.

_Nightmare._

"I wonder..." Sephiroth says, "if you would have been mine, in another lifetime."

Cloud wants desperately to say _no_.

Not even then.

But he lies there, single eye unblinking.

_Please hurry, Zack. Please._

That mouth again, those lips, the tongue. He's licking over his chin, his cheeks, tasting him. All of him. He bites at his ear lobes, his throat, and sucks too, leaving bruises probably, in the shape of his deceit. Even after he's gone, even after Cloud's oh-so wanted escape, even after that, he's still going to have the marks he's branding on him.

He's in his view now, just looking.

There's nothing wrong with that.

Perhaps.

If it wasn't such a curious look.

He's reaching for the bandage around his head.

Where reality ends and Cloud's insanity begins.

His stomach turns.

His fists clench.

Sephiroth's fingers, thin and lovely (unfortunately there really isn't anything by looks that isn't lovely about him), snake under the white threads, and they pull. The protesting stretch is loud in his ears, mimicking the grind of his teeth.

"No, don't."

Cloud's voice is watery.

That's the best he can describe it.

Like water circling the drain.

"Oh?"

Sephiroth tugs.

The bandage tears free.

.

.

.

_Status: Ex-SOLDIER 3rd Class - Location: Midgar train (#4334)_

The final station is in view just around the bend. The train is slowing. The tracks here wind up the largest of all the city's pillars and come to a halt underneath the tallest point in the city, Shinra Tower. The station itself a spectacle of mirrors and hanging chandeliers. If one were to rig an explosive here, the entire city might be lost.

The thought isn't lost on Zack.

He retrieves his sword and makes out.

He's heading for fame, fortune, and most certainly the end.

"Zack?"

His nerves prickle.

He turns to the voice, sword at the ready.

"Zack!"

Kunsel hurries over.

"Where the _hell_ have you been? I called your mom and everything. She didn't know where you were. She's been worried, actually. You haven't sent-"

"I need your help," Zack interrupts, but quickly pauses. "My mom?"

"Yeah," Kunsel provides. "We've got everyone's next of kin on file. I might have done some snooping, y'know."

"How is she? When did you talk to her?"

"Like, a week ago, or something. She sounded fine. Worried, but fine."

"A week ago," Zack repeats quietly.

"Yup. Your dad threw out his back again. She sure likes talking. I see where you get it from. And your optimism. She said you were probably fine."

If this were any other time maybe, he'd let himself have the moment.

But he doesn't.

He grabs Kunsel by the shoulder and moves him aside. He spots a bathroom sign and pulls him there, following him inside, following him still into a stall. He locks the lock and faces his friend.

"I need your help," he whispers.

"What's happened, Zack? They say you're dead. And, well, you're clearly not. Why are they lying, man?"

"Short story, they're out to get me."

"Why?"

"That's not important just yet. They have... they have a friend of mine, and if I don't get to Shinra Tower in," he looks around, forgetting he doesn't have his phone anymore, "an hour, probably, they'll kill him."

"What? Dude. Whoa. Slow down."

He's wearing his 2nd Class uniform, dressed to the nines.

It looks good on him, fitting.

Zack makes himself, painful as it might be, repeat himself.

"So, who has Cloud?"

Kunsel scratches his head.

"Sephiroth."

"No way."

"Yes, way."

"And you want to go to the tower? Now? You know how many guys are out there right now guarding it? You know they never worry about that place, but because of your circumstance-you know, being dead and all-they've ramped it up for the ceremony. Oh, I wrote a speech and everything... If you go there, you're asking for it. They'll shoot first and ask questions later. They might even forget to ask questions. They'll sweep you under the rug, like it never happened."

"That's why I need your help."

Kunsel's face twists.

"Okay. Only because you're a good friend."

"Thank you."

Zack all out hugs him, repeating his thanks.

"Yeah, yeah."

.

.

.

_Status: Infantry Cadet - Location: Shinra Tower (SOLDIER dorms)_

Cloud is finding his breathing hard to control, finding even keeping his eye open a struggle. If he were able, if he had use of his arms and legs, he'd be kicking and thrashing and giving Sephiroth a hell of a time.

As it is, he can only lie there and take it.

Sephiroth is despairingly close to his mouth. He'll come in, over and over, ghosting, taunting, but he never stays, and never makes contact.

Cloud's lips part on a particularly sharp bite.

He groans, beaten.

"Are you in much pain?"

It's asked suddenly and out of character.

He has only moments to think before he's being kissed and it's finalized.

The world is at odds with him then. He's upside down or inside out. The room too bright and then too dark. It's just the flashing from outside, the spotlights, but they're like solid beams, bleaching everything they touch.

He can't breathe.

He can't move.

But it's warmth then, a friendly spreading. It starts, curiously, in his left thumb and fans out from there. He can feel it in his limbs, working up his spine, tickling his throat (working out another groan), easing his turned stomach, and quieting his head, soothing.

It pools at last, warming his loins.

He gasps.

The room is bathed in emerald green, as green as free fields. As green as tree leaves. As green as the stop lights in town. As green as swamps and ponds he's never seen. It's as green as those two terrible eyes.

He's healing him.

And it's everything he's been wanting for.

Relief.

Salvation.

Absolution.

"Two hours, fifteen," Sephiroth reminds.

It's a harsh jab.

"I want you at your best," he confides. "Besides... You're boring me."

He climbs off Cloud.

Cloud lifts himself up after a testing second.

He's feeling more himself now, more balanced.

He checks his leg.

It moves with ease.

Not a hint of the pain before.

He starts dismantling the splint. It comes undone simply. He's not aware of much else, just Sephiroth, and jumping, throwing a fist, a leg, an elbow, then. Not aware of losing or missing, just about fighting back, biting, chewing, spitting, wriggling, killing, killing, killing.

Some fists do hit, some don't.

He's deflected overall and thrown onto his belly.

Sephiroth's full weight crushes down from above.

"I like this better," he purrs.

Cloud coughs, resists.

"Two hours, twenty-five."

Sephiroth pushes down further, forcing all the air from Cloud's lungs.

"We can play a game while Zack is away."

He lets off and Cloud crawls toward the headboard, wheezing.

Sephiroth leaves the bed entirely and comes back with an item.

He presents it.

A black-handled dagger.

Cloud has reached the pillows.

Now he stops.

Sephiroth has left it on the bed spread, open for business.

"If you can kill me, you win. I let you go."

Cloud springs onto the weapon, grabbing it up in both hands. Faster than a shot. Faster than anything Sephiroth would give him credit for. He's jumping off the bed then too, going for his target, Sephiroth. But. He can't.

He'd sooner stab himself.

He can't even take another step.

Sephiroth laughs.

"I hate you," Cloud bites.

He rears his arm up, dagger held at the pinnacle of his reach.

"I hate you!" he screams.

But that's it.

The blade drops, _ting, ting_, to the floor.

Sephiroth's laugh mingles with the wind still rushing in his head.

.

.

.

.


End file.
